COML 4150 - The Theory and Analysis of Narrative

(LA-AS)

Spring. 4 credits.

Enrollment limited to: 15 undergraduates. Core course for COML majors.

J. Culler.

Study of short stories and a novel that self-consciously foreground questions of narrative form and technique and the process of reading. Authors to be read include Balzac, Borges, Barth, Calvino, Cortazar Kafka, and others selected by the students themselves. We will also read theoretical essays on the analysis of narrative by Barthes, Bakhtin, Booth, Genette, Fludernik, Pratt, Shklovsky, and others, focusing on questions about relations between plot and narrative discourse, the discrimination of narrators, the role of gender, and interpretive frameworks for thinking about narrative. Short papers, an oral report, and a longer paper.