Seminar in Narrative Theory Syllabus

Professor: D. F. Felluga Sample Syllabus for Eng 632: Seminar in Narrative Theory The Truth of Narrative

This graduate seminar will introduce students to the utility of structural, especially narratological, models for the analysis of not only literature but also politics and ideology. Two competing although interdependent paradigms for narrative will be explored: the historical model and the fictional model. We will be particularly interested in those instances where the two models intersect and in the historical developments (from the Medieval period through the Postmodern) that led to their presumed and actual separation. The course aligns theoretical approaches with specific texts to illustrate and allow students to implement various critical approaches to literature. A continuing goal will be to find examples from contemporary society that make clear the applicability of the theoretical schools to cultural artifacts beyond literary texts. We will also be working throughout the semester to apply our theoretical readings to specific texts and films from Scott to Coppola and beyond. Required Texts at Von's Books (in order of study)

Scott, Sir Walter. Ivanhoe .

Brontë, Emily. Wuthering Heights .

Barthes, Roland. S/Z .

Brooks, Peter. Reading for the Plot .

Freud, Sigmund. Beyond the Pleasure Principle .

Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness . New York: Dover, 1990.

Spiegelman, Art. Maus I and II

Note: there is also a Reader available at CopyMat

SECTION 1: History, Marxism, Form Heuristic Text: Scott's Ivanhoe

Week One: The Tools of Narrative-- Story and Discourse

The basic narratological concepts of story and discourse will be discussed this week through heuristic examples from Star Trek and Citizen Kane. What constitutes a "good" narrative? To what extent can we say that a narrative always "stacks the deck" to some extent, imposing order on the uncertainty of the real? Though we may praise a narrative for its mimetic referentiality, inevitably it is the re-ordering of discourse that incessantly imposes meaning on the unrelated contiguous events of a diegetic world. Indeed, this fact of narrative form helps explain why humans feel the need to replay traumatic events until those events achieve a certain degree of meaning (Freud's repetition compulsion). Foucault and Benjamin represent two critics who question narrative's tendency to order reality; each critic attempts to open up historical narrative form to the heterogeneity of the historical real.

Monday, January 12: Principium: Introduction to class goals, requirements, and Web resources

Wednesday, January 14 Introduction to basic narrative terms via Star Trek and Citizen Kane S. Cohan and L.M. Shires, Telling Stories (58-59, 83-89) S. Chatman, Story and Discourse

Friday, January 16 M. Foucault, Introduction to Archaeology of Knowledge W. Benjamin, "Theses on the Philosophy of History"

Week Two: The Evolution of Narrative

In this second week, we will explore the very origins of narrative in an effort to understand the divergent uses to which narrative is put in the representation of historical and fictional "reality." In what ways is our understanding of time and space affected by the construction of our contemporary version of narrative reality? We will also follow Hayden White's lead and discuss how history may to some extent be indebted to genres and modes borrowed from fictional literature. On Friday with Lukács, we will then begin our discussion of Marxism and its influence on questions of narrative and historical representation.

Monday, January 19: Martin Luther King Day

Wednesday, January 21 Frye, "First Essay" in his Anatomy of Criticism H. White, "The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality" H. White, Introduction to Metahistory, "The Poetics of History"

Friday, January 23 G. Lukács, The Historical Novel

Week Three: The Chronotope of Medievalism

Having discussed narrative's relation to historical narrative, we will this week begin our discussion of one of the primary theoretical schools concerned with fiction's relationship to history: Marxism. We will also discuss "medievalism" as a pop cultural phenomenon, one that manages to appeal, in Raymond Williams' terms, to dominant, emergent, as well as residual aspects of Scott's society. Bakhtin will also offer to us yet another term, the chronotope, that can help us to understand narrative's manipulation of its time-space continuum, its diegetic world.

Monday, January 26 Talk: D. Felluga, "Scott and the Technology of the Book"

Wednesday, January 28 M Wiener, English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit M. Girouard, The Return to Camelot R. Williams, "Dominant, Residual, and Emergent"

Friday, January 30 M. Bakhtin, "Forms of Time and Chronotope in the Novel" and "Bildungsroman and Its Significance in the History of Realism"

Week Four: The Historical Novel and Dialectical Materialism

This week we will continue our exploration of an important concept in the understanding and emplotment of the historical real: dialectical materialism. The obvious question we will explore is: what is Scott's place in the dialectical changes occurring at the turn of the nineteenth century?

Monday, February 2 Talk: R. Dienst, "Marx, Magic, and Debt"

Wednesday, February 4 M. McKeon, The Origins of the English Novel

Friday, February 6 F. Jameson, The Political Unconscious (34-35, 95-99)

SECTION 2: Structure, Psychology, Ideology Heuristic Text: Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights

Week Five: Romantic and Victorian, Metaphor and Metonymy

Building on the discussions we have had so far, we will examine a text which self-consciously thematizes the transition from a Romantic concern with the transcendent to a Victorian concern with the domestic real. To what extent is the transition successful? How precisely does mimetic realism function? Is there a fundamental narrative distinction to be made between lyric poetry and the realist novel? Jakobsen will help us to begin our discussion of the two interrelated forces of narrative: a metonymic principle of deferral, dilation, and dispersal and a metaphoric principle of order, meaning, and closure.

Monday, February 9 Final discussion of Ivanhoe

Wednesday, February 11 R. Jakobson, "The Metaphoric and Metonymic Poles" S. Cohan and L. M. Shires, Telling Stories, 64-70

Friday, February 13 J. Clayton, Romantic Vision and the Novel (Introduction) W. Wordsworth, The Prelude, Book VI (Simplon Pass episode)

Week Six: Truth Claims of the Realist Novel

Building on our discussion of Jakobsen's distinction between metaphoric and metonymic poles, we will this week examine two prominent critics that have suggested how every narrative incorporates both a metonymic, dispersive dimension of contiguity and a metaphoric, repetitive dimension of substitution.

Monday, February 16 Extended discussion of Wuthering Heights

Wednesday, February 18 J. H. Miller, Fiction and Repetition

Friday, February 20 M. Riffaterre, Fictional Truth

Week Seven: Hermeneutic and Proairetic Codes

Roland Barthes offers us a different structural understanding of the workings of narrative. His work will be examined in its entirety, providing us not only with additional terminology but also a foreshadowing of the postmodern critics that we will read in the final weeks.

Monday, February 23 Talk: D. Felluga, "The Psychodynamics of Literary Form"

Wednesday, February 25 R. Barthes, S/Z Click here for an example of a Barthesian reading of Wuthering Heights

Friday, February 27 R. Barthes, S/Z Sample student readings á la Barthes: Marianne Szlyk Holly Mickelson

Week Eight: Structure and Ideology-- Narrative's Secret Kernel

Yet one more structuralist critic, A. J. Greimas, will round out our understanding of narrative form, specifically the relationship of narrative structure to ideological contradiction. In this way, we can connect our new structural terminology to the Marxist readings of the course's first weeks.

Monday, March 2 Talk: D. Felluga, "The Narrative Secret of Edmund Drood"

Wednesday, March 4 A. Greimas, On Meaning (and Jameson's Forward to this edition)

Friday, March 6 F. Jameson, The Political Unconscious (46-49, 119-29, 166-69, 254-57)

Week Nine: SPRING VACATION--NO CLASSES

Week Ten: The Psychodynamics of the Reading Process

How does psychoanalysis provide us with a strong paradigm by which to understand the dynamic energies unleashed and controlled by narrative structure? Can a psychoanalytic approach help us to understand the social function of narrative form?

Monday, March 16 Talk: E. Allen, "Supplementary, My Dear Watson: Reading Sherlock Holmes' Open Secret"

Wednesday, March 18 D. A. Miller, "Secret Subjects, Open Secrets" P. Brooks, Reading for the Plot (3-48, 216-37)

Friday, March 20 S. Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle