Humanities Arts Cultural Stu 0341 - Narrative Frustration

This seminar is concerned with the peculiarities of narrative worlds that refuse to reveal their secrets. Our reading strategies and storehouse of rhetorical techniques for revealing meaning often fail us as we are outdone by a fictional world that will not allow for "interpretation." We are unmade when our narrative resources cannot keep pace with the project of textual interpretation. How do we cope with the refusal of the text to reveal itself - even to the most adequate of readers? What happens to the act of reading when a text overwhelms its readers with information? How do we manage those types of incorrigible texts? What are the stakes in the 'not-understanding' of difficult texts? We will look at mixed-genres in this seminar: texts that seemed to be marked as ambiguous, texts that upset readerly expectations, and texts that posit the impossible and the incomprehensible. This seminar is reading and writing attentive.

Independent Work Writing and Research Students are expected to spend 12 hours in preparation and work outside of class time.