English 202: Novel Theory, Narrative Theory, and the
Sociology of the Novel
Professor Kent Puckett
TuTh: 12:30-2
223 Wheeler Hall
Office: 473 Wheeler Hall
Office Hours: TuTh: 2:30-4
Description: We will work towards three ends in this course. First, we will read a roughly
representative range of writings about narrative and the novel in order to get
a sense both of the history and of the structure of that field. In so doing, we will see a number of
problems (generic, formal, and historical) emerge and return with an insistence
that is itself worth thinking about.
Second, we will consider ways in which the novel both responds to and
enacts different styles of reading.
If novel theory tends self-consciously to shift between different levels
of methodological abstraction (close reading or distant only for starters), we
might wonder about the relation between those shifts and similar moves between
the general and the particular that have tended to define the novel as a form. Third, we will at a number of moments
consider the ways in which the social and the structural have been brought
differently into alignment in the novel and in the theories that have risen up
around it. We will in these terms
think both about the novel as a differently understood effect of the social and about the novel
as a means of engaging with and understanding social life.
Along with the theory, we will also read three novels: Pamela, Sentimental Education, and The Sacred Fount. Because these works will relate more directly to some themes
than to others, I see our engagement with them more as an opportunity to build
a shared set of textual examples to which we can from time to time refer. As such, I'll ask each reading group
(I'll let you know which group youºre in soon) to submit close readings of the
novels to me (kpuckett@uclink.berkeley.edu)
on Fridays; I will in turn make those close readings available by Sunday
afternoon on our course web site.
I'll also ask you to write a final essay (15-20 pages), which you will
hand in on the final day of class.
Active weekly participation is, of course, assumed.
~
Book List:
M. M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic
Imagination Roland
Barthes, S/Z Gustave Flaubert, Sentimental
Education Gerard Genette, Narrative
Discourse Henry James, The Sacred Fount Georg
Lukacs, The Theory of the Novel Samuel Richardson, Pamela Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel A series of course readers,
available at Metro Publishing, 2440 Bancroft Way ~ Schedule: the novel and abstraction 1/20: introduction 1/22: Franco Moretti, "Conjectures on World
Literature"; Jonathan Arac, "Anglo-Globalism?"; Moretti,
"More Conjectures" Richardson and the novel's rise 1/27: Samuel Richardson, "Preface by the Editor"
(1740); Denis Diderot, "In Praise of Richardson" (1761); Jean-Jacques
Rousseau, "Conversation about Novels" (1761); Clara Reeve, from The
Progress of Romance (1785);
Anna Letitia Barbauld, "On the Origin and Progress of Novel-Writing"
(1810) 1/29: Ian Watt, from The Rise of the Novel; Nancy Armstrong, from Desire
and Domestic Fiction;
Michael McKeon, "Generic Transformation and Social Change: Rethinking the
Rise of the Novel" Samuel
Richardson, Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded: reading group a privacy, character, and the public sphere 2/3: no meeting 2/5: E.M. Forster, from Aspects of the Novel; Deirdre Lynch,
from The Economy of Character; Alex
Woloch, from The One vs. the
Many; Michael Warner,
"Public and Private" Pamela: reading group b epic and novel 1 2/10: Georg Lukacs, The Theory of the Novel 2/12: Lukacs, cont.; Roland Barthes, from Writing
Degree Zero Pamela: reading group c epic and novel 2 2/17: M.M. Bakhtin, "Epic and Novel," "From
the Prehistory of Novelistic Discourse," "Discourse and the
Novel" 2/19: Bakhtin, cont. Pamela: reading group a realism, convention, and the novel 2/24: Sir Walter Scott, from Waverly; G.H. Lewes, from "Realism
in Art"; Emile Zola, from The Experimental Novel; Henry James, review of Nana; Lukacs, "Marxist Aesthetics
and Literary Realism"; George Levine, from The Realistic Imagination 2/26: Eric Auerbach, "In the Hotel de la Mole"; Lukacs,
"Narrate or Describe"; Roland Barthes, "The Reality
Effect"; Tzvetan Todorov, "Verisimilitude"; Frederic Jameson,
"Realism and Desire" Gustave
Flaubert, Sentimental Education: reading group b narrative structure 1: code and technique 3/2: Viktor Shklovsky, "The Structure of Fiction"; Barthes, S/Z 3/4: Barthes, cont. Sentimental
Education:
reading group c sociology and the novel 1: the field of cultural
production 3/9: Lucien Goldmann, "Towards a Sociology of the
Novel"; Bourdieu, from Distinction 3/11: Bourdieu, "Flaubert, Analyst of Flaubert" Sentimental
Education:
reading group a narrative desire 3/16: Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle 3/18: Peter Brooks, "Narrative Desire,"
"Freud's Masterplot"; Susan Winnett, "Coming Unstrung: Women,
Men, Narrative, and the Principles of Pleasure" Sentimental
Education:
reading group b James and Jamesian theories of the novel 3/30: Henry James, selected prefaces and "The Art of
Fiction" 4/1: Percy Lubbock, from The Craft of Fiction; Wayne Booth, from The
Rhetoric of Fiction Henry
James, The Sacred Fount: reading group c personhood and the novel 4/6: Roman
Jakobson, "Shifters and Verbal Categories"; Emile Benveniste,
"The Nature of Pronouns" and "Subjectivity in Language";
Ann Banfield, from Unspeakable Sentences; Maurice Blanchot, from The Space of Literature 4/8: Rene Girard, from Desire, Deceit, and the Novel; Eve Sedgwick, from Between
Men The
Sacred Fount:
reading group a narrative structure 2: voice and tempo 4/13: Gerard Genette, Narrative Dicourse 4/15:Genette, cont.; Susan Lansing, "Toward a
Feminist Narratology" The
Sacred Fount:
reading group b sociology and the novel 2: face-to-face 4/20: Erving Goffman, "The Frame Analysis of
Talk" and "Embarrassment and Social Organization" 4/22: Eve Sedgwick, "Queer Performativity" The
Sacred Fount:
reading group c novel pleasure 4/27: Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text 4/29: Barthes, cont. review 5/4: review 5/6: review