Pizzino, Christopher
MWF 1 :50 PM
Park Hall 0145
The biggest storytelling invention of the modern world isn’t cinema, or television, or Netflix. It’s the novel.
In this class, we will deal with the novel as a historical force. It happened alongside many other typically modern things, and we will ask big questions about the novel's relationship to a lot of them: the birth of the private individual, the division of knowledge and of labor, the emergence of new gender identities and new categories of sexuality, the rise of the nation-state, the development of the middle class, the transformation of religious beliefs and institutions, and others. We will also pay some attention to the novel’s dialogue with the visual arts, especially film.
None of these things will get in the way of the novel as our central concern. We will consider some moments of its development, starting with the emergence of realism in England and then moving forward and backward along a discontinuous timeline.
Wherever and whenever we find ourselves, we will think about the dynamics of the novel as a genre, especially its persistent concern with individuality, its energetic reinvention of its own form, and its weirdly self-reflexive relationship to us as readers.
This is very much a theory course, and theoretical reading will occupy a lot of our attention. The central text will be Theory of the Novel: A Historical Approach, a collection of key readings published by Johns Hopkins UP and edited by Michael McKeon. This will be supplemented by a few other short pieces.
And of course we will read several novels. Each has been chosen for its particular value and also for its usefulness in understanding aspects of the novel as a genre.
Some basic course procedures:
*Reading quizzes will be constant, and will cover both the primary and the secondary reading.
*Weekly journals and/or an in-class presentation may also be required.
*Short essays will be assigned during the term.
*Students will be able to choose either to take a final exam or to write a final essay.
A word on absences:
Students will be allowed four absences. Additional absences will damage the final grade; the more absences there are, the worse the damage will be. If some absences are excused, the damage can be reduced but not erased. Students should be aware that this policy is never altered, and that it has been the primary factor in drops and failures in previous terms. Take this into consideration before deciding to register for the course.
The readings:
The first text is a theory anthology. Bring it to class every day. Titles are listed with ISBN numbers--be sure to match these if you buy online.
Michael McKeon, Ed. Theory of the Novel: A Historical Approach
9780801863974
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
0141439513
Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
0156628708
Michael Cunningham, The Hours
0312243022
Willa Cather, My Ántonia
0140187642
Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony
0140086838
Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe
0141439823
Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart
0385474547
Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote, translated by Edith Grossman
9780060934347