Purpose of the Course:

Welcome!  As its title suggests, this course is designed to expose you to a range of literary fictions and to provide you with tools for studying them.  The course encompasses a variety of fictional texts, including works written by both women and men over a period of almost three hundred years, from the early 18th century to the late 20th century.  Class discussions, essays, and exams will all center around the major themes, formal possibilities, and historical and cultural contexts of the works we study.  The course should improve your ability to appreciate, analyze, and write coherently and persuasively about different kinds of fiction, equipping you with intepretive skills that will assist you in your lifelong practice of reading.

Required Texts:
 

+ Selected chapters of Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan's Narrative Fiction:  Contemporary Poetics (London:  Routledge, 1983).  Available on Electronic Reserve ( http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/rbr/index.html).  Type in English 208, section 003, or use my last name and English 208 as descriptors.  You will need to download and install Adobe Reader (www.adobe.com), if you haven't done so already, to read the chapters on reserve.  Hard copies of these chapters will also be available for two-hour checkout from the Reserve Room in D.H. Hill Library.

Click here for instructions for oral presentations.

Grading, Exams, Papers:

Please note that I use a +/- system of grading.  Your grade for the course will be determined by the following factors:
1. Active class participation (5%).
2. Mandatory attendance (10% or more [see below]).
3. Pop quizzes on the assigned readings.  The quality of class discussions will determine how many such quizzes are necessary.  Please keep up with your reading, and speak up in class! (5%).
4. Two formal, non-research papers, word-processed.  The first essay (15%) is to be 4-5 pages in length and is due Tuesday, March 6.  The second essay (20%) is to be 6-8 pages in length and is due Thursday, May 3.  I will distribute paper topics well in advance of the due dates for your essays.
5. Two midterm exams (25%), the first on Tuesday, February 13, and the second on Thursday, March 29.  The exams will contain brief definition questions; identification questions, which ask you to identify and analyze passages from works we've discussed; and an essay question asking you to compare and contrast several works.
6. A final exam (20%) on Thursday, May 10, 1 - 4 p.m.  The final, which will be comprehensive, will have the same format as the midterms.

Attendance:

You will be allowed a maximum of two absences to accommodate hardships that may arise during the semester.  Any additional unexcused absences will cause you to receive an "F" for a component of the course worth 10% of your overall grade.  More than 5 unexcused absences will cause you to receive an "F" for a component of the course worth 25% of your overall grade.

Completing Assignments:

All assigned readings must be read before the date listed on the syllabus.  All out-of-class assignments are due at the beginning of class.  If an emergency arises and prevents you from turning in your assignment on time, always call me and leave a message on my voicemail if I am not there.  In the absence of any previous consultation with me, work handed in late will be graded down, normally one letter grade for each day that it is late.

Class Schedule:

Below is a list of readings for all class meetings.  The readings are organized in what is basically a chronological order.  This list is meant to provide a common frame of reference for all readings and assignments, but we may have to adjust the schedule as the semester proceeds.

January

T  9  Introduction; read the "Introduction" (pp. 1-5) of Rimmon-Kenan, Narrative Fiction [electronic reserve]

H  11  Swift, Gulliver's Travels (Book I)

T 16  Martin Luther King Holiday

H  18  Gulliver's Travels (Books II and III)

T  23  Gulliver's Travels (Book IV); also read chapters 6 and 7 (pp. 70-105) of Rimmon-Kenan, Narrative Fiction[electronic reserve] and start on Smollett, Humphry Clinker

H  25  Humphry Clinker

T  30  Humphry Clinker

February

H 1  Austen, Sense and Sensibility; also read chapter 8 (pp. 106-16) of Rimmon-Kenan, Narrative Fiction [electronic reserve]

T  6  Sense and Sensibility

H  8  Sense and Sensibility

T  13  First Midterm Examination

H  15  Edgar Allan Poe, "The Fall of the House of Usher" [NASF]

T  20  "Usher"; Herman Melville, "Bartleby, the Scrivener" [NASF]

H  22  "Bartleby"

T  27  Brontë, Wuthering Heights

March

H  1  Wuthering Heights

T  6  Wuthering Heights; First Essay Due

H  8  Gilman, "The Yellow Wallpaper" [NASF]

SPRING BREAK

T  20  Crane, "The Open Boat" [NASF]

H  22  Kafka, "The Metamorphosis" [NASF]

T  27  Kafka, "The Metamorphosis" [NASF]
 

H  29  Second Midterm Examination

April

T  3  Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury; chapter 4 (pp. 43-58) of Rimmon-Kenan, Narrative Fiction [electronic reserve]

H  5  The Sound and the Fury

T  10  The Sound and the Fury

H  12  Holiday

T  17  Olsen, "Tell Me a Riddle" [NASF]

H  19  No class (instructor out of town)

T  24  Borges, "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius"; "The Garden of Forking Paths"; "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote"; and "The Circular Ruins" (all in Labyrinths)

H  26  Borges, "The Library of Babel"; "Funes the Memorious"; "Theme of the Traitor and the Hero"; "Death and the Compass"; "The Secret Miracle"; and "Three Versions of Judas" (all in Labyrinths)

May

T 1  Borges, "The Sect of the Phoenix"; "Story of the Warrior and the Captive"; "The Zahir"; "Kafka and his Precursors"; "Borges and I" (all in Labyrinths)

H  3  Lessing, "To Room Nineteen" [NASF]; Walker, "Everyday Use" [NASF]; Turn in Second Essay by Friday, May 4, at 5 p.m.

Final Exam:  Thursday, May 10, 1 - 4 p.m.