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Academic Year 2004/2005


Style, Authenticity and Community
COL 203 SP

F. Scott Fitzgerald proposed that personality might be "an unbroken series of successful gestures." Is there more to the self than the style that characterizes it? Can style--in particular, literary style--be a means of self-realization? This course will explore these questions and also examine the different ways that style can position the individual within a community. A person can claim membership in a group through adopting a style; or he or she can use a style to demonstrate his or her singularity and difference. Authenticity can be taken as proof that one is a responsible moral being--but who gets to decide what the markers of authenticity are?

We will begin with a study of Flaubert's MADAME BOVARY, a book whose heroine sets the high water mark for inauthenticity in modern literature. We will read some central texts of existentialist philosophy, including works by Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. The main section of the course will focus on existentialism's influence on American literary and political culture in the 1950s and early 1960s; we will read the work of poets, novelists and critics grappling with questions of style and authenticity. The course will conclude with a reconsideration of the postmodern and its purported emphasis on style without depth.

MAJOR READINGS

Gustave Flaubert, MADAME BOVARY
Simone de Beauvoir, THE SECOND SEX
Richard Wright, THE OUTSIDER
Sylvia Plath, ARIEL
Frank O'Hara, LUNCH POEMS
Don DeLillo, WHITE NOISE

EXAMINATIONS AND ASSIGNMENTS

Students will write four essays varying in length from 4-5 pp. to 6-7 pp. Each student will also give an oral presentation in class.

COURSE FORMAT: Seminar

REGISTRATION INFORMATION

Level: UGRD    Credit: 1    Gen Ed Area Dept: HA COL    Grading Mode: Student Option   

Prerequisites: NONE Links to Web Resources For This Course.

Last Updated on MAR-21-2005


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