Topic: "Life Stories" Lecture MW; Discussion TR

We will be discussing a broad range of texts--from tombstone
inscriptions to "masterpieces" of fiction--that purport to be the
truthful life stories of a single character.  The focus will be
on the way writers of different times have shaped these life
stories according to the dictates of their social worlds.  We
will ask how an individual "life" was represented in particular
historical moments, and how class, race, and gender figure in
accounts of a single personality or self.

Some life stories give us the sweeping outlines of a heroic
career; others focus on the details of domestic existence.  Some
celebrate the spiritual or intellectual career of an exemplary
person, one who might help young people plan and conduct their
own lives; other claim to have been written as a kind of therapy
for a troubled storyteller.  Some of the stories try to capture a
unified, identifiable "self," while others treat the life that is
being chronicled as fragmented and ultimately unexplainable.

All of the stories, though, even the fictitious ones, announce
themselves as true accounts.  As such, they present us with many
opportunities to identify with the character who is the subject
of the story and to consider the shape of our own lives.  To help
explain how these identifications are established, we'll be
discussing two recent films--the heroic life of _Braveheart_ and
the story of _Pretty Woman_, a modern-day Cinderella.  In
addition, we will read the following:

Sir Thomas Malory, "The Noble Tale of Sir Lancelot"
Shakespeare, _Othello_
Defoe, _Moll Flanders_ (film version)
Mary Shelley, _Frankenstein_
Dickens, _Great Expectations_
Melville, _Billy Budd, Sailor_
Miles Franklin, _My Brilliant Career_
Ford Madox Ford, _The Good Soldier:  A Tale of Passion_
Sam Shepard, _Fool for Love_