The Fiction of Relationship

Asindividuals we are defined by relationships, by our connection to people,places, and things. Such connectedness can be not only emotional or erotic or political or environmental, but even textual, enacted through writing. Inthis course we explore the nature and meaning of such connections in ten major works of narrative fiction from the 18th century to thepresent. These include: Manon Lescaut by Abbé Prévost; two works by Herman Melville, Bartleby the Scrivener and Benito Cereno; Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre; two stories by FranzKafka, “The Metamorphosis” and “The Country Doctor”;Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse; William Faulkner’s Light in August;  an anthology of stories, Ficciones, by Jorge LuisBorges; The Ice Palace by TarjeiVesaas; Tony Morrison’s Beloved; and Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee.

As this course will demonstrate, the mostcritical relationships in our lives—the linkages both known and unknown—arenot always easy to get a fix on, but literature offers us a special sighting onthese arrangements. Through exploratory readings of these narrative works, thecourse will seek to make relationship visible, bringing our traffic with theworld and with others into clearer focus.