ENGL330

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ENGL330

Narratives, Novels and Society ENGL330 SP

Not Currently Offered

This course will examine how the development of narrative theory since the 1960s has influenced the study of the novel. At stake are a number of fundamental questions about how we understand the relationship of literature to society and politics. The development of the novel as a literary genre runs parallel to the formation of bourgeois society. But narrative, as Roland Barthes describes it, "is present in myth, legend, fable, tale, novella, epic, history, tragedy .... narrative is international, transhistorical, transcultural: it is simply there, like life itself." How can transcultural models of narrative be employed to understand the culturally specific concerns and techniques of the novel? How is the culturally-situated content of a novel affected by its narrative structure? What are the ideological and critical implications of maintaining -- or dismantling -- distinctions between fictional narrative and historical or journalistic narrative? In what sense was the development of the semiotic study of narrative also an attack on popular and realist fiction? Do experimental or avant-gardist novels escape the ideological implications of bourgeois narrative? We will read a selection of theoretical works as well as a novel or two (to be chosen by the class at the beginning of the semester) that will serve as case studies for class discussion.

MAJOR READINGS

Armstrong, Nancy, selection from DESIRE and
DOMESTIC FICTION
Auerbach, Erich, selection from MIMESIS
Bakhtin, M.M., "The Problem of Speech Genres"; selections
from THE DIALOGIC IMAGINATION
Barthes, Roland: "Introduction to the Structural Analysis of
Narratives"; S/Z
Benjamin Walter: "The Storyteller"
Echevarria, Roberto Gonzalez: selection from MYTH AND
ARCHIVE
Frye, Northrop. "Myth, Fiction and Displacement"
Jameson, Fredric: selection from THE POLITICAL UNCONSCIOUS
Genette, Gerard: selection from NARRATIVE DISCOURSE
Goldmann, Lucien: selection from TOWARDS A SOCIOLOGY OF THE
NOVEL
Levi-Strauss, Claude: "The Structural Study of Myth"
Lukacs, Georg: "Narrate or Describe?"
McHale, Brian: selection from POSTMODERNIST FICTION
McKeon, Michael: selection from THE ORIGINS OF THE ENGLISH
NOVEL
Moretti, Franco: selection from SIGNS TAKEN FOR WONDERS
Ricoeur, Paul: selection from TIME AND NARRATIVE

EXAMINATIONS AND ASSIGNMENTS

Five short response papers, one class presentation, one longer final paper.

ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS and/or COMMENTS

This course counts toward the department's Theory requirement. Unless preregistered students attend the first class meeting or communicate directly with the instructor prior to the first class, they will be dropped from the class list. NOTE: Students must still submit a completed Drop/Add form to the Registrar's Office.

COURSE FORMAT: Discussion Lecture

REGISTRATION INFORMATION

Level: UG Credit: 1.00 Gen Ed Area & Dept: HA ENGL

Prerequisites: None

Last Updated on MAR-22-1999

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