Fall 2024
Tuesday and Thursday, 3:10-4:30PM, V110

Nathalia King
CC305, office hours Monday 11AM-noon; Tuesday, 11AM-noon and 4:30-5:30PM
e-mail: nking@reed.edu; tel: 503-517-7697 

Course Description

This course will study the relations between description and narration in the novel. We will explore how literary description is constituted, the variety of purposes it has, and how those purposes might sustain, diverge from or complicate the narrative's project. Our inquiry will be guided by three basic questions. In what ways might one usefully catalog the relations between description's special interests in specific moments, landscapes, objects, characters and the plot’s overarching teleology? How does the relation between description and narration illuminate a novel’s representation of material culture, its place in a literary tradition, or its role as a carrier of ideology? How do the preferred media or sensorial technologies of a particular period influence the description and narration of that period? For purposes of rudimentary historical survey, the course opens with bookend texts, one from the ancient, one from the contemporary, and one from the medieval period. For purposes of closer study, we will spend most of the semester reading naturalist, realist, and modernist novels.

Learning Outcomes

  1. Recognize, define, and use theoretical terms and concepts pertaining to description and narratology;
  2. Compare narratological theories and their historical contexts;
  3. Reflect on the cogency and potential applications of theoretical arguments;
  4. Refine close reading and analytical writing skills.