COML 3630 - [The European Novel]

(HB) (LA-AS)

Fall. 4 credits.

Next offered 2014-2015.

W. Cohen.

This course studies masterpieces of European fiction since 1350, with primary attention to the 19th and 20th centuries. We will trace the history of the novel form-from the frame-tale collection through metafiction, epistolary narrative, and fictional autobiography, to realism, modernism, and postmodernism. A central concern will be how these forms embody a changing relationship to the world beyond Europe-whether that wider world is engaged as literary source, cultural alternative, or object of colonization. Readings: Boccaccio, Decameron; Cervantes, Don Quixote; Montesquieu, Persian Letters; E. Brontë, Jane Eyre; Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment; Kafka, “Metamorphosis,” “In the Penal Colony,” and other stories; Pamuk, My Name Is Red.