Alternative Narrativities: Generic Form and De-Formation
- Winter 2015
Additional Details:
Course Description: For this course, we’ll be reading a set of hybrid narrative—narratives, that is, that do not fit easily into any single category (novel, short story, memoir, etc.), but instead intentionally mingle different narrative forms. We’ll consider the formal aspect of this, how and why particular writers combine various forms as they do and what the effects of that are likely to be for readers. But the formal question blends inevitably into key questions about content and about the limits of narrative forms to represent human realities (much less the bigger cosmic realities out there). We’ll read as well a couple short stories (tbd) and some short pieces on narrative theory. There will be frequent response papers, but the primary writing for the course will be a long paper dealing with the reception history of one of the texts we are reading, an assignment designed to prepare students to undertake independent research for their spring honors essays.
Required Texts:
Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own (ISBN 0-15-678733-4)
The Bible (King James version)
John Milton, Paradise Lost: Norton Critical Edition (ISBN 978-0-393-92428-2)
Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony (ISBN 0-14-008683-8)
Barry Lopez, Arctic Dreams (ISBN 0-375-72748-5)
Reading packet