Comparative Literature 690N - The Formation of the Novel

This course examines the development of the novel as a literary genre from the 19th-century to the present in conjunction with major theories of the novel. We will pay particular attention to questions of form, class ascension and moral education, the regulation and transgression of gender norms, and the trope of the road/the journey. Primary texts will draw from the following: Stendhal, L?Education sentimentale, Flaubert, Madame Bovary, Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, Proust, Du cote de chez Swann, Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out, Georges Perec, La disparition, Marguerite Duras, L?amant, Tayeb Salih, Season of Migration to the North, Ben Okri, The Famished Road, Maryse Conde, Heremakhonon, and Akweke Emezi, Freshwater. Theoretical readings will be drawn from Lukacs, Jameson, Said, Bakhtin, Levine, Felsky, Fanon, Moretti, Genette, Cohen, and others.