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Literary and Cultural Criticism (20th and 21st centuries)

Code: 100264
Credits: 6
2026/2027
Degree programme Type Course
Spanish Language and Literature OP 3
Spanish Language and Literature OP 4
English Studies OP 3
English Studies OP 4

Contact lecturer

Name :
Antonio Penedo Picos
Email :
antonio.penedo@uab.cat

Group languages

You can consult this information at the end of the document.

Prerequisites

Given that students have demonstrated the acquisition of core competences by obtaining the credits corresponding to basic training and compulsory courses, they are expected to express themselves correctly both orally and in writing. For this reason, any spelling or expression errors they may commit will result in a reduction of the final grade.

​Activities, practical assignments, and coursework submitted for this subject must be original; under no circumstances will the total or partial plagiarism of external materials published in any medium be tolerated.

​The submission of non-original material without properly citing its source will automatically lead to a failing grade (0) and the initiation of disciplinary sanctions (such as a written report to the competent university authorities), which will furthermore entail the absolute impossibility of any reassessment option.

​Furthermore, students are assumed to be familiar with the general guidelines for presenting academic work. Nevertheless, they must apply any specific rules that the course instructor may indicate, should they deem it necessary.

Objectives

  • ​To acquire a critical and flexible cartography of the main theoretical-literary currents of the 20th and 21st centuries, understanding literature not as a watertight compartment, but as a continuous flow and a distinct gnoseological phenomenon.


  • ​To develop the analytical, technical, and methodological rigor necessary to interpret the literary text both from its material immanence and from its historical, cultural, and ontological projections.


  • ​To transvalue reductionism and critical nihilism through the exercise of a purposeful literary criticism based on ethical listening, hospitality toward the text, and the mediation of meaning.




Learning outcomes

  1. Submitting works in accordance with both individual and small group demands and personal styles.
  2. Critically interpreting literary works taking into account the relationships between the different areas of literature and its relationships with human, artistic and social areas.
  3. Solving problems about writers, methods and currents of comparative literature, and connecting them with knowledge of other humanistic disciplines.
  4. Autonomously searching, selecting and processing information both from structured sources (databases, bibliographies, specialized magazines) and from across the network.
  5. Analyse the formal, thematic, cultural and historical characteristics of works of literary creation and reflection on the literature of different languages and countries.
  6. Demonstrate knowledge of the basic theoretical foundations of the main methods and trends in literature and criticism.
  7. Arguing about several issues and literary problems for the purpose of different works and the assessment of the results.
  8. Present written work or oral presentations on the main concepts of literary theory.
  9. Critically interpret literary works taking into account the relationships between the different fields of literature and their relationship with human, artistic and social areas.
  10. Present work in formats suited to personal demands and styles, both individually and in small groups.
  11. Analyse literary texts using the different concepts and methods of comparative literature.
  12. Solving problems related to the study of different literatures.
  13. Solve problems related to the theoretical foundations and the main concepts in the study of literary criticism.
  14. Identify and explaining the basic foundations of the process of literary communication in every genre and the interpretation process from questions and theoretical and/or practical activities.

Contents

​I. Architecture of the Course


​The course is articulated around three major epistemological axes that guide the students from the internal materiality of the text to its transcendence as a lived experience. By moving beyond the rigidity of watertight compartments, the contents are approached as a continuous flow in which each methodology dialogues with, complements, or disputes the previous one, offering a flexible cartography for the critical interpretation of the literary phenomenon and its own gnoseology.



​II. Fundamental Contents and Lines of Inquiry


​Axis I: Epistemology and Architecture of the Text


​This block examines the materiality of the text, its internal operating rules, and the breakdown of the referential illusion, providing students with analytical and technical rigor before approaching external projections.


  • ​Textual immanence and the construction of the artifice: Russian Formalism (Viktor Shklovsky, Boris Eikhenbaum, and Yuri Tynyanov). The concept of defamiliarization (ostranenie) and the quest for literariness. The linguistic devices that transform ordinary language into an artistic object.
  • ​The structural grammar of literature and the aesthetic norm: Tzvetan Todorov and French Structuralism. Jan Mukařovský and function, norm, and aesthetic value as semiotic and social facts. The structure of the text versus interpretative arbitrariness.
  • ​Cultural semiotics and the openness of the text: Yuri Lotman and the semiosphere: the text conceived as a "thinking device" and a crossroads of cultural codes. Roland Barthes and the epistemological transition "from work to text."
  • ​Discourse and the orders of knowledge: Michel Foucault and the 'archeology of knowledge' underlying language. The literary text as a space of archive, institutional order, and the delimitation of the sayable. Jacques Derrida and deconstruction as an ethical circulation from the center to the periphery and its eternal return.


​Axis II: The Text and its Refractions (Subject, Myth, and Identity)


​A space dedicated to analyzing how the text links with the deep psyche, history, and contemporary identity tensions, diversifying approaches to avoid reductionist readings.


  • ​Archetypal criticism and depth psychology: From Sigmund Freud to Carl Gustav Jung and the 'collective unconscious' applied to literary creation: universal archetypes and the permanence of myth beneath the surface of the modern text. Mythocriticism: Joseph Campbell and Mircea Eliade.
  • ​Sociology of literature and material production: Marx and Engels and The Frankfurt School: Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno. The concept of the "aura" in the work of art, technical reproducibility, and the literary text conceived as a historical, social, and economic product.
  • ​Identity discourses in modernity: The analysis of the canon and representation. Virginia Woolf, Simone de Beauvoir, and the genealogy of the female subject. Toril Moi, Elaine Showalter, and gynocriticism. The deconstruction of normative identities, Judith Butler, and the dialogue with postcolonial cultural alterity: Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak.



​Axis III: Hermeneutics and Ontology of Literature


​A block of synthesis and resolution that overcomes the risk of critical nihilism. It abandons the stance of the analyzing subject as a destructive prosecutor to recover listening, interpretative vectors, and the event of meaning.


  • ​Phenomenology and hermeneutics of reading: Wolfgang Iser and Hans Robert Jauss. The flexibility of the text and the reception's horizon of expectations. The reader subject as a necessary co-creator and activator of the work.
  • ​Interpretative cooperation and the rights of the text: Umberto Eco and the channels of reading. Dialectics between the 'open work' and the 'model reader'. The text as a conceptual brake against ideological or manipulative overinterpretation.
  • ​Paul Ricœur and the inquiry into meaning: from text to action. Overcoming the 'hermeneutics of suspicion'. The necessary transition from destructive demystification toward a 'hermeneutics of listening' and ethical hospitality toward the text.
  • ​Gadamer and aesthetic ontology: Literature as an 'event of being' and the disclosure of truth (aletheia). The aesthetic experience and the fusion of horizons. Final balance of the course: literary criticism as a mediator and discloser of meaning. Literary fiction as its own ontological truth: literature is irreducible because it is an ontological event in its own right, a spacetime where the human being experiences the truth of alterity through the aesthetic experience of FICTION.




Learning activities and methodology

Title Hours ECTS Learning outcomes
Theoretical-practical classes 60 2.4 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14
Tutorials and assessment 15 0.6 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14
Preparation of classes, tests and papers 75 3 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14

The methodology will be very simple: the classes will consist of the teaching presentation of the programmed contents and their reflection thanks to the students' participation. In order to give the information it will be necessary be supported by a dossier of translated articles that will be explained during the classroom work. On the basis of the oral enunciation and the written material, a set of arguments and perspectives will be obtained, whose coherence and effectiveness will be achieved at the end of the course.


Annotation: Within the schedule set by the centre or degree programme, 15 minutes of one class will be reserved for students to evaluate their lecturers and their courses or modules through questionnaires.

Annotation: within the schedule set by the centre or degree programme, 15 minutes of one class will be reserved for students to evaluate their lecturers and their courses or modules through questionnaires.

Assessment

Continuous assessment activities

Title Weight Hours ECTS Learning outcomes
Final work 50 % 0 0 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14
Test 1. 25 % 0 0 1, 3, 4, 7, 8, 12, 14
Test 2. 25 % 0 0 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14

GENERAL EVALUATION CRITERIA


  1. ​The submission deadlines for all assessment tasks will be announced at the beginning of the course.
  2. ​All assessment tasks must be submitted via email.


​Common Criteria for Continuous and Single Evaluation


  1. ​The use of any materials distributed in previous academic years that are not available on the current course's virtual campus is strictly prohibited. Such materials will not be evaluated and their use will result in a progressive reduction of the grade.
  2. ​Students who fail to submit more than 30% of the assessment tasks will be graded as "Not Evaluable" (Absent).
  3. ​To pass the course, students must achieve a minimum final average grade of 5.
  4. ​Students who have completed at least two-thirds (2/3) of the assessment tasks are entitled to reassessment.
  5. ​Students with a final average grade below 3.5 are not eligible for reassessment.




​ASSESSMENT TASKS (CONTINUOUS EVALUATION)


  • ​Task 1 (25% of the final grade): A 5-page critical analysis of a current affairs article related to the core themes of the course.
  • ​Task 2 (25% of the final grade): The development of a research project proposal on an literary text. The extension must be exactly 1 + 5 + 1 pages, structured as follows: a full-page outline/index, five pages detailing the main thesis and argumentative hypotheses, and a final page for the bibliography. This task must consist solely of the hypothetical project proposal, not the actual development of the research points.
  • ​Task 3 (50% of the final grade): This grade corresponds to Task 3 of the course, the guidelines for which are outlined below:


​Guidelines for the Evaluation of Task 3:


  • 1st. To be eligible for a passing grade, the paper must be a minimum of 15 pages in length, with no maximum page limit.
  • ​2nd. Chapters, sections, or sub-sections (regardless of the structural division chosen) must not coincide with the titles and authors of the course reading packets. This task is not a series of separate summaries for each individual dossier.
  • ​3rd. Students may not selectively choose which reading packets to include; all course dossiers must be explicitly integrated and utilized.
  • ​4th. Explicit bibliographic citations (including text location and page numbers) must be provided for every dossier.
  • ​5th. All content delivered during lectures by the course professor constitutes evaluable material. A progressive lack of integration of these contents will proportionally reduce the final grade.
  • ​6th. The assignment consists of the detailed definition, application, and analytical reflection of each and every concept, issue, and framework of analysis developed throughout the course. It must not be a brief synthesis or selection of these elements.
  • ​7th. The course syllabus and its disciplinary approaches—supported by the articles analyzed in class—must serve as the orientation and framework for the fulfillment of the previous point.
  • ​8th. Students have complete freedom regarding the reorganization and distribution of the material, as well as the choice of the primary thesis underpinning the paper's argumentative structure.
  • ​9th. Personal opinions are respected but are not subject to evaluation.
  • ​10th. The evaluation will assess the student's capacity to formulate free, critical, well-documented, and reasoned arguments based on the frameworks of the course subject matter.




​POLICY ON ACADEMIC MISCONDUCT AND AUTHORSHIP


​If a student commits any irregularity or act of academic misconduct that could lead to a significant variation in the grade of an assessment task, that specific task will be graded as 0, regardless of any further academic or legal sanctions that may apply. If multiple irregularities occur within the assessment tasks of the same course, the final grade for the course will be 0.


​Assessment tasks in which irregularities have occurred (such as plagiarism, unauthorized use of AI, etc.) are not eligible for reassessment. It is strictly forbidden to submit any assessment task generated by artificial intelligence programs as work of human authorship.


​*An oral tutorial may be conducted to verify the original authorship of the assessment tasks submitted by the student.



​SINGLE EVALUATION


  • Task 1 (25% of the final grade): The development of a research project proposal on literay text: outline, index, thesis, and bibliography (this must be a hypothetical project proposal, not the development of the research points, with an exact extension of 1 + 5 + 1 pages).
  • ​Task 2 (25% of the final grade): A 5-page critical analysis of a current affairs article related to the core themes of the course.
  • ​Task 3 (50% of the final grade): A research paper of at least 15 pages (minimum requirement to be eligible for a passing grade, with no maximum page limit) presenting and reflecting upon the concepts, perspectives, and arguments developed during the course. The paper must include bibliographic citations from the articles studied in class, in strict accordance with the Guidelines for the Evaluation of Task 3.



​Submission and Reassessment: All three tasks must be submitted together as a single submission via email on the same day scheduled for Task 3 of the continuous evaluation. Reassessment will take place on the date specified in the faculty academic calendar.


Bibliography

​​General reference bibliography.


  • ​Adorno, Theodor W. (1970): Teoría estética. Madrid: Taurus, 1980.
  • ​Aguiar e Silva, Vítor Manuel de (1967): Teoría de la Literatura. Madrid: Gredos, 2011.
  • ​Asensi Pérez, Manuel (1998/2003): Historia de la teoría de la literatura (2 vols.). Valencia: Tirant lo Blanch.
  • ​Cabo Aseguinolaza, Fernando y Rábade Villar, María do Cebreiro (2006): Manual de teoría de la literatura. Madrid: Castalia.
  • ​Ceserani, Remo (1997): Introducción a los estudios literarios. Barcelona: Crítica, 2004.
  • ​Chicharro Chamorro, Antonio (2007): Sobre la teoría de la literatura. Madrid: Síntesis.
  • ​Compagnon, Antoine (1998): El demonio de la teoría: Literatura y sentido común. Barcelona: Acantilado, 2015.
  • ​Culler, Jonathan (1997): Breve introducción a la teoría literaria. Madrid: Debate, 2000.
  • ​Della Volpe, Galvano (1960): Crítica del gusto. Barcelona: Península, 1971.
  • ​Domínguez Caparrós, José (2002): Teoría de la Literatura. Madrid: Editorial Centro de Estudios Ramón Areces / UNED.
  • ​Eagleton, Terry (1983): Una introducción a la teoría literaria. México/Madrid: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2016.
  • ​Eimermacher, Karl (Ed.) (1971): Teoría de la literatura de los formalistas rusos (2 vols.). Madrid: Alberto Corazón, 1978.
  • ​Gadamer, Hans-Georg (1960): Verdad y método (2 vols.). Sígueme: Salamanca, 1977.
  • ​García Berrio, Antonio (1994): Teoría de la Literatura: La construcción del significado poético. Madrid: Cátedra.
  • ​Garrido Gallardo, Miguel Ángel (2000): Nueva introducción a la teoría de la literatura. Madrid: Síntesis.
  • ​Genette, Gérard (1982): Palimpsestos: La literatura en segundo grado. Madrid: Taurus, 1989.
  • ​Glowinski, Michel; Okopien-Slawinska, Aleksandra y Slawinski, Janusz (1975): Manual de teoría literaria. Madrid: Castalia, 2011.
  • ​Heidegger, Martin (1950): Caminos de bosque. Madrid: Alianza, 1995.
  • ​Iser, Wolfgang (1976): El acto de leer: Teoría de la efecto estético. Madrid: Taurus, 1987.
  • ​Jauss, Hans Robert (1970): La literatura como provocación. Barcelona: Península, 1976.
  • ​Jauss, Hans Robert (1977): Experiencia estética y hermenéutica literaria. Madrid: Taurus, 1986.
  • ​Julià, Jordi (2005): L'arquitectura de la ficció. Barcelona: Empúries.
  • ​Lentricchia, Frank (1980): After the New Criticism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980.
  • ​Llovet, Jordi (Ed.) (2005): Teoría de la literatura y literatura comparada. Barcelona: Ariel.
  • ​Lotman, Yuri M. (1970): Estructura del texto artístico. Madrid: Istmo, 1982.
  • ​Matejka, Ladislav y Pomorska, Krystyna (Eds.) (1971): Teoría de la literatura formalista. Barcelona: Lumen, 1977.
  • ​Moi, Toril (2017): Revolution of the Ordinary: Literary Studies after Wittgenstein, Austin, and Cavell. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  • ​Mukařovský, Jan (1936-1941): Escritos de estética y semiótica del arte. Barcelona: Península, 1977.
  • ​Pozuelo Yvancos, José María (1988): Teoría del lenguaje literario. Madrid: Cátedra.
  • ​Ricœur, Paul (1969): El conflicto de las interpretaciones: Ensayos de hermenéutica. Buenos Aires: Megápolis, 1975.
  • ​Ricœur, Paul (1983-1985): Tiempo y narración (3 vols.). Madrid: Cristiandad / Siglo XXI, 1987.
  • ​Ricœur, Paul (1986): Del texto a la acción: Ensayos de hermenéutica II. Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2002.
  • ​Segre, Cesare (1985): Principios de análisis del texto literario. Barcelona: Crítica.
  • ​Todorov, Tzvetan (Ed.) (1965): Teoría de la literatura de los formalistas rusos. Buenos Aires: Signos, 1970.
  • ​Villanueva, Darío (Comp.) (1994): Curso de teoría de la literatura. Madrid: Taurus.
  • ​Viñas Piquer, David (2002): Historia de la Crítica Literaria. Barcelona: Ariel.
  • ​Wahnón, Sultana (2008): Teoría de la literatura y hermenéutica. Vigo: Academia del Hispanismo.
  • ​Wellek, René y Warren, Austin (1949): Teoría literaria. Madrid: Gredos, 2009.


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Course groups and languages

The information provided is provisional until November 30. After this date, you will be able to consult the language of each group through this link. To access the information, you will need to enter the course CODE

Type of teaching Group Language Semester Shift
(TE) Theory 1 Spanish second semester morning-mixed
(PAUL) Classroom practices 1 Spanish second semester morning-mixed