English 44 - Fall, 2012

Introductory Topics in Fiction

Topic: Historical Fiction/Fictitious History

Class Information

Instructor: Dobbins, Gregory
CRN: 22249
Time: MWF 10:00-10:50
Location: 206 Olson

Description

What exactly is the relationship between fiction and history? How does language construct some representation of reality that accounts for history? How does style change in response to historical change? These are some of the questions we will seek to explore in this introductory class to the medium of fiction. In loose, not entirely technically accurate, terms, this class will be concerned with "the historical novel"-- or, with different works that seek to represent history in innovative ways. We will be reading two nineteenth century novels, two Modernist works, and two Post-Modernist works in an effort to determine what the relationship between fiction and history is and is not.

Grading

TBA

Texts

Waverly, Sir Walter Scott
A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
Dubliners, James Joyce
To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
The Passion of the New Eve, Angela Carter
The Emigrants, W.G. Sebald