LIT 4013 Spring 2018 Mariano

This course stages the study of the novel as the study of philosophy’s claim that life must be lived forwards, but can only be understood backwards. To that end, we will read novels that dramatize ideas about the nature of reality and temporality, what consciousness means, what experience is, and what it means to know the past or to have memories. We will be keenly interested to see what connections emerge from our reading, not only for our understanding of experience, time, consciousness, and memory, but also for our understanding of the genre of the novel as a form and representation of experience. We will read: Edgar Huntly (Charles Brockden Brown), The Violent Bear It Away (Flannery O’Connor), Native Son (Richard Wright), Kindred (Octavia Butler), In the Skin of a Lion (Michael Ondaatje), and Round House (Louise Erdrich). Course work includes several analytic papers, graded class participation, and two exams.