BASC70180 - The Art and Ends of Reading: The Novel II—The Sound and the Fury

Course Description

An exploration of the thesis that the novel is the most important and most distinctively modern form of Western art, insofar as it aims to represent the totality of life, and to do so in a way that educates the reader to what it means to be and become individual. In the seminar, we will read two major reflections on the meaning and significance of fiction in the modern world, John Gardner, On Moral Fiction, and James Wood, How Fiction Works, together with several shorter pieces; in the tutorial, we read Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, in conjunction with several key commentaries, with a view toward comprehending something about the distinctiveness of the novelistic form and its relation to the task of becoming individual. A practicum as well as a critical inquiry: we want to discuss how to read, not just the readings, and to consider reading as a practice.

Required Texts:

Faulkner. The Sound and the Fury, The Corrected Text. Vintage. ISBN 978-0679732242.

Gardner. On Moral Fiction. ISBN 978-0465052264

Wood. How Fiction Works. ISBN 978-1250183927.

Notes

Online registration deadline: Thursday, December 29 at 5 pm CT