The Riddle of the Author

Catalog description

Even after "the death of the author," the author has proven hard to replace or ignore in literary analysis. The concept remains unsettled but inescapable. This course explores the ways authorship manifests itself within different types of scholarship, ranging from single-author criticism to biography. How do these different modes interpret, and represent, an author? How do they understand the relationship between writer, life and work? Possible authors include Auden, Bishop, Dickens, George Eliot, Ellison, Freud, Hurston, James, Orwell, and Plath.