All Reading & Composition courses must be taken for a letter grade in order to fulfill this requirement for the Bachelor’s Degree. This course satisfies the first half or the “B” portion of the Reading and Composition requirement.

What is a story? What assumptions do we make when we read a story? In other words, what conventions, techniques, or practices of narration are there to which we have become so accustomed that they seem invisible or taken for granted? Who talks and how? When does one “talk” in a narrative? How do narratives or stories sustain an illusion of reality? What happens when we have a work of literature that challenges or subvert these conventions?

This course will investigate a diverse group of modern texts, such as Calvino’s If On A Winter’s Night a Traveler, texts which all center around or are structured by a mystery (missing persons in or misplaced manuscripts); above all, these texts also manipulate, challenge, and upend the conventions of narrative. In other words, there is the mystery in the text as well as the mystery of the text itself.

Narratives (Not Comprehensive):
Borges, Jorge Luis, Selections from Ficciones
Cortazar, Julio “The Continuity of Parks”
Calvino, Italo. If On A Winter’s Night a Traveler. (ISBN-10: 0156439611)
Calvino, Italo. The Non-Existent Knight
Mitchell, David. Cloud Atlas (ISBN-10: 0375507256)

Narrative Theory Texts (Not Comprehensive):
Abbott, H. Porter, Selections from The Cambridge Introduction to
Narrative
Bal, Mieke. Selections from Narratology
Barthes, Roland. “The Death of the Author” and “The Reality Effect”
Foucault, Michel. “What is an Author”
Genette, Gerard. Selections from Narrative Discourse

Research Texts (Not Comprehensive):
Booth, Wayne C. and Gregory G. Colomb. The Craft of Research, Third Edition

Prerequisite:  Successful completion of the “A” portion of the Reading and Composition requirement or its equivalent.  Students may not enroll nor attend R1B/R5B courses without completing this prerequisite.