Literary Experiments
How have contemporary U.S. authors grappled with the problem of representing consciousness, subjectivity, 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 specific forms of experimental or postmodern writing allow us to represent internal experiences like memory and association. We will also 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. This course will introduce students to a range of literary genres and to the principles of academic close reading, analysis and writing at a university level.
Texts: Texts are likely to include Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses, Tracy Letts’s August: Osage County, and poems from T.S. Eliot and Marianne Moore.