Listed in: English, as ENGL-95
Dale E. Peterson (Section 03)
Although little studied as a separate literary form, the book of interlinked short stories is a prominent form of modern fiction. This course will examine a variety of these compositions in an attempt to understand how they achieve their coherence and what kinds of “larger story” they tell through the unfolding sequence of separate narratives. Works likely to be considered include Hemingway’s In Our Time, Joyce’s Dubliners, Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio, Jean Toomer’s Cane, Eudora Welty’s The Golden Apples, Alice Munro’s The Beggar Maid, Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, Raymond Carver’s Cathedral. The course concludes with a significant independent project on a chosen modern (or contemporary) example of the form and its relation to preceding works.
Open to juniors and seniors. Limited to 15 students. Spring semester. Professor Peterson.
If Overenrolled: Preference given to senior and junior English majors.