INSTRUCTOR: SHARPE, JAE
Experimental Representations of Consciousness in Literary Forms
How have authors grappled with the problem of representing consciousness and qualia in writing? In this course, we will consider how prose, poetry, and dramaturgy have endeavored to depict human thought, considering how particular forms of experimental or postmodern writing allow us to represent different kinds of thoughts, like memory and association. We will consider how these authors use form and content in tandem to comment on human subjectivity and the question of how faithfully thought can be conveyed through literature.
Texts are likely to include Samuel Beckett’s Endgame, Joan Didion’s Play It As It Lays, Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, poems from William Blake, Wallace Stevens, Dionne Brand, Anne Sexton, and W.B. Yeats, and short stories from James Joyce, Edgar Allan Poe, and Franz Kafka.