COML 6385 - [The Fiction of Empire]

(crosslisted)
(also ENGL 6385)

Fall. 4 credits.

Next offered 2014-2015.

W. Cohen.

A primarily colonizers’-eye-view of European expansion in canonical fiction of the 19th century. Emphasis on the relationship of genre and geography, and in particular on the representational capacities of realism and other fictional forms, the literary consequences of the differences between land-based and overseas empires, and the significance of being on the delivering or the receiving end. Fiction: Chateaubriand, Atala; Melville, Moby-Dick; Multatuli, Max Havelaar; Flaubert, Salammbô; Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment; Rizal, Noli Me Tangere; Tagore, stories; Machado de Assis, Dom Casmurro; Conrad, Heart of Darkness; Gide, The Immoralist. Criticism: Moretti, Said, Spivak, etc. Reading available in English.