Fall 2005 Courses

English 137-01: The Novel (Tobeck)

TTh 2:45-4:15
Old Main 111

This course treats a small selection of English-language novels. Although this selection covers several sub-genres and literary eras, the texts do not so much “represent” these structures as fold into our exploration of how, why, and to what extent the different things that the novel might be can or should still be grouped together under one generic umbrella. We’ll examine the relationship between the novel form and the construction of the self (in various states of being subject /of/ or subject /to/) on an uncharted island, in outer space, and in other more densely-populated areas in between, and consider narrative dispositions of/toward such issues as trauma and history, knowledge and the unknown, and madness and civilization (or: sex, drugs, war, and the U.S. Postal Service).

Reading List

Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe**
Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre
Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49
Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone
Henry James, The Turn of the Screw**
Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five
Toni Morrison, Beloved
J. M. Coetzee, FOE
(**Specific editions required)

Fall 2005 Course Listings