Fall 2008 Courses

English 137-01: Introduction to the Novel: Literary Grotesques (Jarrin)

T/TH 3:00-4:30pm MAIN 011

Introduction to the form and aesthetic/historical development of the novel. As we examine novels from a variety of historical moments, cultural frameworks, and national contexts, we'll also consider the meanings and manifestations of the "grotesque": from Frankenstein's monster to the eponymous anti-heroes of Dorian Gray and American Psycho, we'll shake hands with the monstrous, the genius, the depraved, the revolutionary, and the human. Formal and stylistic concerns (language, metaphor, prosody, narrative voice, tone, point-of-view) will enter our conversation to underscore the connections between the novel form and its grotesque content. We'll also encounter postmodern revisions of the novel as a literary genre and ideological project, with attention to authors (Capote, Amis, Nabokov, Gabriel Garcia Marquez) whose work self-consciously challenges novelistic convention in grotesque and iconoclastic ways.

Several questions will animate our interrogations of the novel as a genre and the grotesque as a particular framework: What is the relationship between literary production and anxieties of mortality, deformity, and human reproduction? How has the novel responded to unnatural technologies of immortality and questions of the supernatural? How might language and narrative perform gruesome acts of violence, insatiable consumption, and/or cannibalism? How do particular novels represent or even embody monstrosity? How do representations of race, gender, and sexuality manifest themselves within the grotesque as a literary mode? How have the gothic, horror, and war genres shaped our cultural understanding of the grotesque?

Likely Texts (8-9 of the following novels): Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray; Nathanael West, Day of the Locust; Flannery O'Connor, Wise Blood; Truman Capote, In Cold Blood; Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire; E.L. Doctorow, Book of Daniel; Michael Herr, Dispatches; Toni Morrison, Sula; Martin Amis, Time's Arrow; Gabriel García-Márquez, Autumn of the Patriarch; Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian; Stephen King, The Shining; Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho

Related Films: Frankenstein (Dir. James Whale, 1931); The Shining (Dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1980); Gods and Monsters (Dir. Bill Condon, 1998); American Psycho (Dir. Mary Harron, 2000); Capote (Dir. Bennett Miller, 2005)

Requirements: Journals (25%); Papers (50%); Participation/Quizzes/Presentation (25%)

*First day attendance required.* This course fulfills the 100-level/introductory English major requirement.

Fall 2008 Course Listings