The course will examine principal methods of literature research and historical review of literary critisism in Farnce from the beginning of the twentieth century until nowadays, such as consciousness criticism, thematic criticism, psychocriticism, sociocriticism, genetic criticism, stuctural and poststructural criticism.  With the guidance and supervision of the instructor, the students will analize a selection of critical texts representative for different methodological currents. Some of the topics to be discussed at classes are general issues of the literature theory and metacriticism, such as principal features of the New Criticism (Nouvelle Critique), a problem of objectivity and subjectivity in criticism, a problem of aesthetic estimation of a literary work, a definition of the ”theme”, a concept of trajet critique, a concept of conscience structurante, various definitions of hermeneutic circle, a problem of the ‘death of the author’, an opposition: literary work-text. Fragments of selected works and articles by Gustave Lanson, Gaston Bachelard, Charles Mauron, Jean-Pierre Richard, Georges Poulet, Jean Starobinski, Marc Angenot, Hans Georg Gadamer, Paul Ricoeur, Maurice Blanchot, Roland Barthes will be discussed.

Course grading: active participation in class, final paper.