DESCRIPTION:
In the past two centuries. Europe, the Americas, Africa, and the Asia and Pacific regions saw an explosion of extremely creative, thought-provoking, and life-altering novels. Broadly, the novel is a prose narrative “that deals imaginatively with human experience, usually through a connected sequence of events involving a group of persons in a specific setting” and with complexity (Anthony Burgess, Britannica).
Novels include an extensive range of types and styles: picaresque, epistolary, Gothic, romantic, realist, historical, the western, roman-flueve (river novel), proletarian or graphic narratives, among others.
This course focuses on British and American novels representative of the following subgenres: the picaresque, realist, detective, science fiction, metafiction, and graphic narratives, all of which have become predominant in the later 20th and early 21st centuries.
Close reading of these books (most of which are relatively short) will allow us to examine fundamental structural concepts such as narrator, focalization, plot, and theme. The common narrative motif of these books is the journey, whether physical or psychic.
Schedule permitting, I will provide brief sketches of Western and non-Western precursors of these subgenres. Class sessions consist of small group and class discussions, and one individual presentation; it is not primarily a lecture class.
STUDENT LEARNING OUTCOMES:
- Enhance and increase knowledge of basic concepts of the novel;
- Enhance and increase knowledge of representative texts;
- Improve ability to comprehend and interpret and discuss prose fiction;
- Improve ability to write academic prose about literary texts
REQUIRED TEXTS INCLUDE:
Henry James, Daisy Miller, 1875
Woolf, To the Lighthouse, 1927
Bellow, The Adventures of Augie March, 1953
Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room, 1956
Agatha Christie, 4.50 from Paddington, 1957
Nabokov, Pale Fire, 1960
Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land, 1961
Spiegelman, Maus I, 1980 (graphic novel)
REQUIREMENTS: one 2-page response paper (double-space) per novel; one class presentation; final exam
Email inquiries to rhsu@hawaii.edu