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ENGL 380: Introduction to Narrative Theory

MWF 10–10:50am Dr. Beatrice Sanford Russell Taper Hall 107 [email protected] Fall 2018 Office Hours: Taper 433 Mon 1–2, Weds 11–12

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Course

People say that they “get lost” in a good story—as if a story were a maze, or a wilderness, or an unknown country. The metaphor of being lost suggests the strange magic that narratives perform in transporting us elsewhere: one minute we are sitting down with a or starting a movie, and the next we are suddenly penned up in a storm-exposed farmhouse on a Yorkshire moor in 1802; haunting a small, “spiteful” building at 124 Bluestone Road in Cincinnati in 1874; or thinking the thoughts of a scared child standing by his parents’ tombstones. But just how does this narrative magic work? In this class we put together a basic guidebook for finding our way through narratives, analyzing major narrative features and techniques, and becoming familiar with some of the key theoretical approaches to narrative study.

We begin by examining the building blocks of narrative, including aspects of narration, , and plot, ranging across different narrative platforms such as short stories, , narrative poems, essays, comic strips, films, and musical albums. We then follow what has been called the “ethical turn” in narrative studies in considering how narratives and our experiences of them are shaped by gender, sexuality, race, and nationality. Finally, we engage with recent experiments in narrative that challenge how we categorize and process stories, from Beyoncé’s -bending visual album, Lemonade, to Maggie Nelson’s stunning work of autotheory in The Argonauts.

Learning Objectives

At the end of this course, students will be able to: ● Define major narrative features and elements of narrative theory (such as narrative embedding, narrator distance, focalization, temporal ordering, and gapping) and identify examples of these features in an unfamiliar narrative text. ● Compare how different narrative platforms use point of view, duration and pace, and characterization. ● Analyze complex instances of narrative focalization and of the relationship between story and discourse. ● Recognize genre conventions of gothic, noir, and Bildungsroman, as well as major characteristics of realist, modernist, and postmodernist narrative styles. ● Draw on theoretical texts in order to reflect on how your cultural identity shapes your own experience of narrative.

Course Books

Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (1847; Penguin, 2002) Charles Dickens, Great Expectations (1861; Penguin, 2002) Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (1927; Harcourt, 1989) Toni Morrison, Beloved (1987; Vintage, 2004) Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts (Graywolf, 2015) Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric (Graywolf, 2014) H. Porter Abbott, The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative (2008)

Assigned texts not in the course books will be posted to Blackboard.

Description of Assignments and Grading Breakdown

You will complete two short exercises applying techniques for analyzing narrative to a selected passage: one marking the order of discourse versus story, and the other tracing the use of focalization. You will produce either: a combined creative/critical project in which you develop a short narrative and write a companion of 700–900 words analyzing the effect of your creative choices with respect to narration, plot, or characterization; or a comparative essay of 1600–1800 words analyzing the effects of two texts’ different use of a particular narrative feature. You will write a 750–1000 word reflective essay engaging with one of the ethical questions that narrative poses. You will be responsible for contributing five entries to a class of narrative. Your entries will define and explain key terms of narrative, and will list relevant examples from our course readings. This class dictionary will be used as a collective study guide for the final exam.

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Assignment Points

Exercise 1 50

Exercise 2 50 Dictionary Entries 50

Participation 150

Reflective Essay 150

Creative/Critical Project, or Comparative Essay 250

Final Exam 300

Expectations

You will:

● attend class regularly and on time. You must clear legitimate absences—for illness, religious holidays, or emergencies—with me beforehand. After three unexcused absences, each further unexcused absence will cost 25 points from your participation grade. Three instances of tardiness will count as an unexcused absence. ● closely read assigned texts, making notes while you read (print out any Blackboard texts), and come to class prepared for discussion. ● be engaged and focused in class, listening to others respectfully and with openness to differing points of view, and avoiding the distractions of phones and computers. If you would like to use a laptop to take notes, please clear it with me before class. ● work to produce creative and intelligent writing. ● turn your work in on time. Essays turned in after the due date will be penalized by 25 points for each day that they are late.

I will:

● prepare for class time while remaining flexible to respond to your interests, questions, and concerns. ● approach each day with enthusiasm and an openness to learning alongside you. ● communicate clearly and in a timely manner about assignments, deadlines, and grading criteria. ● be available over email and in office hours to discuss issues relating to the course, and to serve as a resource for your reading, thinking, and writing. ● read your work carefully, provide thoughtful feedback, and evaluate it fairly according to clear standards. I will accept rewrites within one week of handing back your papers. Your rewrite will replace your original paper grade. To be accepted, rewrites must be accompanied by a one-page discussion of your rewrite that refers both to my comments on your paper and to the grading rubric in order to explain the changes you made during revision.

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Schedule of Readings Topics Readings Tasks Week 1 Introduction first paragraphs of Wuthering Heights, Great Aug 20 beginnings Expectations, To the Lighthouse, and Beloved

Aug 22 middles, ends John Jeremiah Sullivan, “Upon this Rock”

Aug 24 Narration Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights, chs. 1–7 Sign up for narrative levels; Abbott, “Framing narratives,” pp. 28–30 dictionary embedding Gérard Genette, Narrative Discourse, pp. 227–28 entries Week 2 Aug 27 story/discourse Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights, chs. 8–12 Abbott, “Defining narrative,” pp. 13–20

Aug 29 story/discourse, Wuthering Heights, chs. 13–17 cont’d. Abbott, “Defining narrative,” pp. 20–25

Aug 31 narrator, Wuthering Heights, chs. 18–23 narrattee Abbott, “Narration,” pp. 67–73 Week 3 Sept 3 LABOR DAY – NO CLASS

Sept 5 focalization Wuthering Heights, chs. 24–30 Abbott, “Narration,” pp. 73–78

Sept 7 Wuthering Heights, chs. 31–34 Charlotte Brontë, Editor’s Preface to the New Edition of Wuthering Heights J. Hillis Miller, fr. “Wuthering Heights: Repetition and the ‘Uncanny’” Week 4 Sept 10 adaptation Kate Beaton, “Wuthering Heights,” parts 1–6 William Wyler, Wuthering Heights Abbott, “Adaptation across media,” pp. 112–127

Sept 12 pictorial John Keats, “The Eve of St. Agnes” Turn in narration William Holman Hunt, The Eve of St. Agnes Exercise 1 John Everett Millais, The Eve of St. Agnes Arthur Hughes, The Eve of St. Agnes Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, fr. Laocoön ch. 16

Sept 14 film narration Alfred Hitchcock, Vertigo Seymour Chatman, “Point of View in Film,” pp. 158– 61 Week 5 Characterization Sept 17 dramatic roles, Robert Browning, “My Last Duchess,” “Porphyria’s character Lover” psychology Vladimir Propp, fr. “The Functions of Dramatis Personae”

Sept 19 agency Charles Dickens, Great Expectations, chs. 1–8 Abbott, “Character and self in narrative,” pp. 130–3

Sept 21 flat vs. round Great Expectations, chs. 9–13 characters Abbott, “Character and self in narrative,” pp. 133–8

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Week 6 Sept 24 peripety, Great Expectations, chs. 14–19 discovery Aristotle, fr. Poetics

Sept 26 polyphony Great Expectations, chs. 20–26 Mikhail Bahktin, “Heteroglossia in the Novel,” pp. 301–8

Sept 28 character systems Great Expectations, chs. 27–35 Alex Woloch, fr. “Partings Welded Together: The Character-System in Great Expectations” Week 7 Plot Oct 1 causality, events Great Expectations, chs. 36–45 Abbott, “The rhetoric of narrative,” pp. 40–46

Oct 3 suspense, Great Expectations, chs. 46–54 surprise Peter Brooks, fr. “Repetition, Repression, and Return: The Plotting of Great Expectations”

Oct 5 closure Great Expectations, chs. 55–59 Abbott, “Closure,” pp. 55–65 Week 8 Oct 8 temporal Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse, “The Window,” Turn in ordering chs. 1–8 Exercise 2 Erich Auerbach, fr. “The Brown Stocking”

Oct 10 agon To the Lighthouse, “The Window,” chs. 9–16 Abbott, “Narrative negotiation,” pp. 193–99

Oct 12 plot vs. character To the Lighthouse, “The Window,” chs. 17–19 Aristotle, fr. Poetics Week 9 Oct 15 gapping, To the Lighthouse, “Time Passes” indeterminacy Abbott, “Interpreting Narrative,” pp. 83–97

Oct 17 autobiographical To the Lighthouse, “The Lighthouse” elements Maria DiBattista, fr. “To the Lighthouse: Virginia Woolf’s Winter’s Tale”

Oct 19 masterplots Kendrick Lamar, “good kid, m.a.a.d. city” Abbott, “The rhetoric of narrative,” pp. 46–49 Abbott, “Narrative contestation,” pp. 185–91 Week 10 Narrative Oct 22 George Saunders, “The Semplica-Girl Diaries” Wayne C. Booth, The Company We Keep, pp. 13–15

Toni Morrison, Beloved, chs. 1–3 Oct 24 Susan S. Lanser, fr. “Toward a Feminist

Oct 26 Beloved, chs. 4–8 Maurice Blanchot, fr. “The Limit Experience” Week 11 Turn in Oct 29 Beloved, chs. 9–14 project or Emmanuel Levinas, fr. “Reality and Its Shadow” essay

Oct 31 Beloved, chs. 15–19 Suzanne Keen, fr. “A Theory of Narrative Empathy”

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Nov 2 Beloved, chs. 20–24 Homi Bhaba, fr. “DissemiNation: Time, Narrative and the Margins of the Modern Nation” Week 12 Nov 5 Beloved, chs. 25–28 Wolfgang Iser, fr. “The Reading Process: A Phenomenological Approach”

Nov 7 Carmen Maria Machado, “The Husband Stitch”

Nov 9 BEA TRAVELING – NO CLASS Week 13 Narrative Experiments Nov 12 Beyoncé, Lemonade Turn in reflection Nov 14 Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts, pp. 1–46

Nov 16 The Argonauts, pp. 46–89 Week 14 Turn in Nov 19 The Argonauts, pp. 89–143 dictionary entries Nov 21 THANKSGIVING – NO CLASS

Nov 23 THANKSGIVING – NO CLASS Week 15 Nov 26 Claudia Rankine, Citizen, Parts 1–3

Nov 28 Citizen, Parts 4–6

Nov 30 Barry Jenkins, Moonlight Week 16 MONDAY, DECEMBER 10, 8–10am Final Exam

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Statement on Academic Conduct and Support Systems

Academic Conduct: – presenting someone else’s ideas as your own, either verbatim or recast in your own words – is a serious academic offense with serious consequences. Please familiarize yourself with the discussion of plagiarism in SCampus in Part B, Section 11, “Behavior Violating University Standards” policy.usc.edu/scampus-part-b. Other forms of are equally unacceptable. See additional information in SCampus and university policies on , http://policy.usc.edu/scientific-misconduct.

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