ABOUT THE COURSE:The course familiarizes students with the generic features of epic, novel and short story. It explores the development and historical trajectories of novel and short story, and their similarities and differences. It studies the inception and evolution of science fiction as a genre and the major features of magical realism. The course consults important critical thoughts and reads a range of literary works to understand the different genres. Literary texts covered include some of the seminal works that are taught at the Undergraduate and Postgraduate levels – Cervantes’ Don Quixote, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield, Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis, James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Manand Ulysses, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, and Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children; short stories by Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar, Margaret Atwood, and Thomas King. At the end of the course, students will be equipped with the art, craft and literary techniques of different forms of fiction.
Overview
Syllabus
Week 1 : A Study of Genology: Genre and neo-/classical formulation; Prescription of generic purity and hybridity of genres in practice.
Week 2 : Fiction and Different Modes of Narrative: Epic and Novel –relation of time and space with events; Scope and worldview of epic and novel; Epic hero and novel hero; Era of novelization.
Week 3 : Commentary on the Genre of Novel: Through selected artwork, following topics will be discussed – Polyglossia and the essence of history; The protagonist as the novel hero; Hilarity understood through horizon of expectations; From novel to history as a metafictional device; New readership and a new language mode Text: Cervantes’ Don Quixote
Week 4 : Novel and Existence: Novel and different aspects of existence (Seinsvergessenheit); Novelin/and the changing society Texts: Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis.
Week 5 : Features of the Novel: Narrative strategy - Story and plot; Reader and critic; Time, narrative, narrative voice/s; History and novel; Fantasy and dream; Life and Fiction; Fantasy and Prophecy; Parody and Intertextuality Texts: Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glas.
Week 6 : Tragedy and Comic Absurdity in Novel: Protagonist’s journey as a lack of totality and telos; Failure of language and breakdown of communication; Circular pattern of narrative and futility of existence Text: Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary.
Week 7 : The Modern Novel: Through selected novel/s, following topics will be discussed – Human psyche; Agency of the reader; Imagination, irrationality, reflection; Narrator and/as character; Time and temporality; Theme and poetic unity Texts: James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway.
Week 8 : Short Story in the Modern and Post-modern Era: Short story as a genre; Through selected short stories of Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar, Margaret Atwood, and Thomas King, following topics will be discussed – brevity, non-story, multiple truths, quest for identity, disruption of/from the familiar.
Week 9 : Short Story and Novel: Narrativity, time and form; Plot, central problem and stylistic devices; Realistic and metaphorical approaches, character as a symbol; Historical trajectory.
Week 10 : Science Fiction: Inception and development of Science Fiction; Science Fiction and Techno-Cultural Experience;Science Fiction film; Science fiction and feminism – the Cyborg Texts: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels.
Week 11 : Magical Realism: Magical realism and post-modern artwork; From Expressionism to Magical Realism; Mystic and magical; Syncriticism and the magical ideal; New objectivity; Derealization, defamiliarization and fabulation Texts: Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children.
Week 12 : Future of Fictional Writing: New genres and experimentations; Reading a book and/in the era of digitization; Reading in translation.
Taught by
Prof. Sarbani Banerjee
