New
York in historiographic metafiction – Spring 2004/BS
Authors
and works:
Michael Chabon: The Amazing
Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (2001)
Mark Helprin: Winter's Tale
(1983)
Steven Millhauser: Martin
Dressler:
The Tale of an American Dreamer (2001)
(The novels will be read in
the following order – Chabon: session 1-3;
Helprin: session 4-6; Millhauser: session 7-8.)
Theory
and approaches:
Metafiction – Mark Currie
(ed.): Metafiction
(Longman, 1995)
Historiographic metafiction
– Linda Hutcheon: A Poetics of
Postmodernism: History,
Theory, Fiction
(Routledge, 1988)
Magical realism – Lois
Parkinson Zamora & Wendy B. Faris (eds.): Magical
Realism: Theory, History, Community
(Duke, 1995)
Meta-realism & realism
– Michael Riffaterre: Truth in
Fiction (Johns
Hopkins,
1990)
(NB: All theory texts will
be available in a course master box for
individual photocopying.)
Course
description:
The topography of New York
is particularly appealing for novelists who
seek the broad canvas so typically employed in historical novels,
magical realism and the overlapping mode of historiographic
metafiction. The works chosen here all share, at least, the following
features: They have a historical setting; they play out on the
colourful, larger than life canvas of New York; and most importantly
they feature a tension between realistic description and playfully
destabilizing language and narrational effects, such as the ones we
know from metafiction, romances of various kind (detective novels,
fantasy and science fiction) and magical realism.
The aim of the course is to
focus on the role given to New York as
setting (i.e. reading its literary topography), and to examine how the
description of setting colours our reading of characters, themes and
narration in these texts. It is in such descriptive passages that we
particularly find a tension between the reality effect and
metafictional devices. The course proposes to develop a meta-realist
reading of the works in question and thus indirectly come to a deeper
understanding of the workings of the hybrid genre and mode labels
mentioned above.
Course
Plan:
Week 1:
Introduction to the field
(no theory reading)
Michael Chabon – first
third of The
Amazing Adventures of Kavalier
& Clay
Week 2:
Patricia Waugh: “What is
metafiction and why are they saying such awful
things about it?” (in Currie (ed.))
Michael Chabon – middle
third of The
Amazing Adventures of Kavalier
& Clay
Week 3:
Linda Hutcheon:
“Historiographic metafiction” (in Currie (ed.))
Michael Chabon – final
third of The
Amazing Adventures of Kavalier
& Clay
Week 4:
Wendy B. Faris:
“Scheherezade’s Children: Magical Realism and
Postmodern Fiction” (in Zamora & Faris (eds.))
Mark Helprin – first third
of Winter's
Tale
Week 5:
Rawdon Wilson: “The
Metamorphoses of Fictional Space: Magical Realism”
(in Zamora & Faris (eds.))
Mark Helprin – middle third
of Winter's
Tale
Week 6:
Theo L. D’haen: “Magic
Realism and Postmodernism: Decentering
Privileged Centers” (in Zamora & Faris (eds.))
Mark Helprin – final third
of Winter's
Tale
Week 7:
Linda Hutcheon: “Theorizing
the postmodern: toward a poetics” (in
Hutcheon)
Steven Millhauser – first
half of Martin
Dressler: The Tale of an
American Dreamer
Week 8:
Michael Riffaterre: “Truth
in Diegesis” (in Riffaterre)
Steven Millhauser – second
half of Martin
Dressler: The Tale of an
American Dreamer