Παρουσίαση/Προβολή

(ENL407) -  Thalia Trigoni

Περιγραφή Μαθήματος

Our course will address the formal, stylistic and thematic evolution of the novel from the mid-twentieth century to the present, focusing on innovations in the novel’s form and fiction’s engagement with history. We will develop a sense of the cultural, philosophical, social, economic and aesthetic concerns that arose in the aftermath of World War II, the return of American prosperity, and the expansion of the middle class. Our approach to these works will raise fundamental questions about the very nature of contemporary American fiction itself: What are the features of literary postmodernism and postmodern thought? How is contemporary fiction in dialogue with social, technological and political developments of the past 50 years? How do American narratives negotiate between fact and fiction? We will explore novels that draw upon a particular formal stylistic repertoire such as self-reflexivity, new-ness, and being consciously experimental; the metafictional impulses of the 1960s and ‘70s; economic developments such as advanced or late capitalism; social and cultural trends like identity politics; the rise of multiculturalism and the full range of postmodern experimentation that characterize the period. We will also examine the ways in which fiction since 1950 has chronicled anxieties growing out of events ranging from the Civil Rights Movement to the rise of feminism; from the Cold War and its fear of communism and nuclear warfare to the Age of Terror.

Novels

Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49

Philip Roth, Portnoy’s Complaint

Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

Don DeLillo, Falling Man

Ημερομηνία δημιουργίας

Κυριακή 5 Μαρτίου 2017