Reading Fiction

Catalog description

ENGL 262 examines the critical, theoretical, and practical issues that readers face when reading fiction. Students will examine critical concepts ranging from fundamental analytical concerns such as plot structure, characterization, and themes, to broader ethical, philosophical, social, and political questions raised by fiction. As a genre course, ENGL 262 will pay special attention to the critical issues and problems raised by reading fiction, as opposed to reading poetry, drama, or non-fiction. Authors might include the following: Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Walpole, Burney, Sterne, Smollett, C.B. Brown, Austen, J.F. Cooper, Hawthorne, Melville, Child, Chopin, Shelley, the Brontes, G. Eliot, Dickens, Hardy, Thackeray, James, Joyce, Woolf, Bellamy, Faulkner, Hemingway, Morrison, Delillo, Reed, Barthe, Coover, Ellison, Nabokov, Wright, Welch, Erdrich, and others.