Literary Experiments
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 and will examine 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:
Texts are likely to include Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, Charles Portis’s The Dog of the South, Sam Shepard’s Suicide in B♭, and poems from T.S. Eliot and Frank O’Hara.