English 235 - Winter, 2012

Theory of Fiction

Class Information

Instructor: Corin, Lucy
CRN: 53871
Time: R 3:10-6:00
Location: 308 Voorhies

Description

Candidates for the MA in Creative writing are required to take either this course or ENL 236 (Poetics), which are offered in alternating years. I approach the Theory of Fiction with the particular concerns of fiction writers; in fact, while the course is open to and appropriate for graduate students working in a variety of disciplines, each year I teach this course I structure it in a way I hope will speak to the particular writers we have in the program. In 2012 the design of the course will incorporate creative approaches to the analysis of aesthetically diverse fictions. We’ll work toward assembling a class anthology of model works of fiction paired with apt works of criticism, individual or collaborative single or multi-media artist’s notebooks, and a series of writings designed to expose the assumptions and underpinnings of our creative practices in an effort to push ourselves as artists.

Texts:
The one text to buy from the bookstore is the Ferguson edition of Aristotle’s poetics. There will be a course reader of fictions and essays on Smartsite and a choice between a couple experimental novels, one of which has a title that might prevent the bookstore from ordering it, and we'll decide this on the first day of class. I’m assembling a reader that will include articles that shaped my understanding of what we do (Susan Sontag, Roland Barthes, Henry James, Flannery O’Connor) as well as a selection of articles that I know affect the ethos of contemporary writing but that I've never studied before. The goal here is provide a model for the development of an ongoing relationship with conceptualizing and challenging what you do as a writer.