L204 2047 GORDON
Introduction to Fiction

11:15a–12:30p TR (18) 3 CR.

This course will cut across centuries and hemispheres to study the techniques and essentials of great fiction. In doing so, this course will also investigate the perennial human appeal and cultural power of storytelling. We will begin with some of the oldest types of stories known to history—the epic, the fable, the fairy tale—and will look at how elements of these literary forms endure or change over the centuries as we study other forms: the short story, the novella, the novel. We will also investigate work from two different literary traditions: traditional realist fiction and nontraditional fiction, often called antirealist or anti-mimetic. Course requirements will include several brief response papers, four in-class essays, and a take-home final exam. Specific works and authors may include the following: The Epic of Gilgamesh; selections from The Odyssey; works by Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm; Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice; Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God; Paul Auster’s City of Glass; and short works by such writers as Herman Melville, Franz Kafka, Jorge Luis Borges, Nathaniel Hawthorne, John Barth, and Margaret Atwood.