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Narratives, Novels and Society
ENGL330 SP

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 semio tic 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 chos en 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: Lecture

REGISTRATION INFORMATION

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

Prerequisites: NONE

Last Updated on MAR-24-2000

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