Comparative Literature 791MN - S-Engagement/Modern Novel

A comparative approach to the writing of James Joyce, William Faulkner, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Toni Morrison. These writers are linked in their ability to reveal and comment upon their cultures, their ideological perspicuity, and yet their avoidance of polemic or didacticism. An exploration of their textual methods that make possible these effects will include the following topics: speaking from the margin; scrupulous meanness; localism and the creation of imaginative space; mythic structuring as a narrative mode; symbols, reification, and dissociated metaphors; apparitions and voices; repetition as a narrative device; methods of stream-of-consciousness; the power of focalization; modernist and postmodernist strategies. A broad comparative perspective will be set through student reports on additional authors. Requirements: class participation; an oral report; 20-page seminar paper.