Examines the poetry, drama, and fiction of selected representative writers and analyzes the works from various literary theoretical perspectives. Course will trace Modern concepts of radical individualism, re-contextualization through myth, dominance of psychoanalytic thinking, emancipatory emergence; particularly as it relates to women, and the shift from an epistemological to an ontological aesthetic in the works of modernists such as Yeats, Pound, Eliot, Woolf, Joyce, Faulkner, O'Neill, and others. In the context of the contractual nature of language and its development with structuralism, poststructuralism, and deconstruction, we will analyze the works of postmodern poets, playwrights, and novelists such as Beckett, Ionesco, Churchill, Byatt, Morrison, and Nabokov. Critical response papers are required, as well as the presentation of seminar papers on specific authors and/or topics. [ 3 credits ]