Robert Daly fall, 2006
Office: Clemens 511
Office Hours: W 1:30-3:30 and by appointment.
Telephone: 645-2575, ext. 1052
email: rdaly@buffalo.edu
English 541, The Twentieth-Century American Novel, W 3:30-6:10, Clemens 538
With its focus on connections, more than just on the individual or the collective, the novel has become increasingly the genre of our time and place.
So we shall pay attention to the cultural conversations and the cultural work of the novel, to the ways in which it works to challenge and enlarge our epistemology and sense of options, whether we consider ourselves modern, postmodern, or something completely different.
We shall pay attention to questions of both period and genre. Postmodernism was named and theorized ex ante by Onís (1934), Olson (1951), Toynbee (1954), Mills (1959), Howe (1959), Levin (1960), Fiedler (1965), Hassan (1971), and probably others. Anderson, Jameson, and Harvey agree that it emerged as a pervasive cultural force only in the early 1970’s, but even this notion remains contested, as does the notion that it is now fading and being replaced by the epistemological templates of network culture. We shall also consider the reactions of Alfred Döblin (1878-1957) and other novelists to the modernist dismissal of the novel as mere utilitarian scribbling, Kathy Eden’s argument that successful interpretation is frequently thematized through “not only the traditional analogy between reading and the journey home but also that between the literary work read and a carefully woven tapestry”
[Hermeneutics and the Rhetorical Tradition (Yale, 1997)], and David Lodge’s argument that “the current stir of scientific interest in consciousness” coincides with increasing interest in the novel, since “the single human voice, telling its own story, can seem the only authentic way of rendering consciousness” [Consciousness and the Novel (Secker and Warburg, 2002)]. So it won’t hurt too much to descend to specifics. We shall explore these matters and others by actually reading some novels. We shall pay attention to the cultural conversations and the cultural work of the novel in our time and place.
We shall read, within the reciprocal economies of their cultural contexts, some modern, postmodern, and contemporary American novels, along with some in which the borders between these categories seem quite permeable. We shall explore questions of agency. We shall consider these texts as both representative (participating in the cultural conversations of their times) and hermeneutic (affording practice and skills in the arts of interpretation); as enacting a “hermeneutics of suspicion” (Ricoeur), a “hermeneutics of empathy” (Buell), and a “hermeneutics of respect” (Robbins); as enabling “paranoid reading” (Sedgwick), “reparative reading” (Sedgwick), an “ethics of reading” (Miller), and any other modes of reading members of the seminar care to do.
Each student taking the course intensively (for full credit) will be expected to participate in seminar discussions, to give a seminar report (12-16 minutes) on one of the texts, and to write a research essay (12-32 pages, due 8 November) on a subject of her or his own choosing. Those taking the course extensively will be expected to do everything but the research essay.
Texts:
Wharton, Edith. Summer. Harper Collins, or Signet.
Cather, Willa. My Ántonia. Houghton Mifflin.
Anderson, Sherwood. Winesburg , Ohio. Norton Critical Edition.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. Scribner’s.
Pynchon, Thomas. The Crying of Lot 49: A Novel. Harper Collins.
Gardner, John. Grendel. Vintage.
Morrison, Toni. Song of Solomon. New American Library.
Tan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club. Ivy Books, Ballantine.
Momaday, N. Scott. The Ancient Child: A Novel. Harper Collins.
Power, Susan. The Grass Dancer. Berkley Books.
Morrison, Toni. Paradise. Penguin.
These texts are available at Talking Leaves Bookstore. Once you decide to take the course, you should get them as soon as you can, since my texts tend to sell out quickly.
Syllabus
30 introduction, seminar report topics chosen
6 Edith Wharton, Summer (1917) 285 pages
13 Willa Cather, My Ántonia (1918) 238 pages
20 Cather continued. Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio (1919) 138 pages
27 F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925) 182 pages
4 Fitzgerald continued.
11 Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49: A Novel (1966) 152 pages
18 John Gardner, Grendel (1971) 174 pages
25 Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon (1977) 341 pages
1 Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club (1989) 332 pages
8 N. Scott Momaday, The Ancient Child: A Novel (1989) 315 pages; Research Essay Due 12-32 pages
15 Susan Power, The Grass Dancer (1994) 333 pages
22 Fall Recess: University Holiday
29 Toni Morrison, Paradise (1998) 318 pages
6 Elastic
Evaluation: Your grade will be based on your seminar discussion, seminar report, and research essay.
Attendance: Since the University suggests that my attendance policy may be mysterious if not made explicit, attendance is required. Seminars depend both absolutely and epistemologically on discussion. If you don’t discuss, you and others learn far less than if you do. And discussion in absentia, while technically possible, is unlikely to occur.