This course will offer an in-depth survey of modern literary and cultural theory. Students will be guided to discover the deep links between modern theories of liberty and literary production, consumption and meaning. The diverse and incongruent thinkers that we will encounter during the quarter share nonetheless a foundational axiom of critique: each in different ways interrogates the modern liberal premise of individual liberty that otherwise undergird modern theories of individual and collective agency. We will begin with the most important late-nineteenth century critics of modern liberalism: Nietzsche, Freud, and Marx. From there we will study some of the most important literary scholars of the 20th century who have pursued, transformed and amplified the critical methods initiated by the aforementioned critics of modernity. Our investigations will reveal literary theory as centrally preoccupied with the limits of the liberal tradition in comprehending questions of authorship, literary form, originality, value, aesthetics and language.