World Novel

Catalog description

Development of the modern novel in the last century (outside the British Isles and the United States); lectures, discussions, readings in translation. CMLIT 185 / ENGL 185 The Modern Novel in World Literature (3) (GH) (BA) This course meets the Bachelor of Arts degree requirements. In this course, students will read examples of the modern novel from around the world. Focusing on novels written outside of America and England, this class will explore the development of the modern novel as a genre across a number of world cultures. As an example, moving from the beginnings of literary modernism (the late nineteenth century) through the early and mid twentieth century, the course will consider works by writers such as the following: Chinua Achebe, Italo Calvino, Albert Camus, Simone deBeauvior, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Isak Dinesen, Marguerite Duras, Natalia Ginzburg, Herman Hesse, James Joyce, Thomas Mann, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Kenzaburo Oe, and Marcel Proust. This course will address the ways in which the world novels under consideration constitute examples of various literary forms and styles. The class will examine the differences and distances between literary movements such as social realism and magical realism, modernism and postmodernism. The goals of this course will be to hone students' critical reading and writing skills while granting them the ability to think about the modern novel as a distinct genre in a comparative global context. This course will help students to develop the analytical skills necessary to analyze complex written texts..