Course Description
Exploration of the connection between ethics and literature and how narrative influences the formation of our ethical character, based on key theory, fiction, and non-fiction texts from East European literature. Investigation of the relationship between authors and readers and differences between fiction and non-fiction. All readings and discussions in English.
Athena Title
LIT AND MORAL LIFE
Semester Course Offered
Not offered on a regular basis.
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
This course will introduce and explore the relationship between contemporary ethical theory and narrative fiction and non- fiction. We will read a selection of key texts that require their readers to take an ethical position by drawing them into intersubjective relationships between authors and readers, tellers and listeners. While fiction asks us to examine these relationships from the safe distance of suspended disbelief, non-fiction claims “reality” itself as its ultimate referent. In our analysis of fictional and non-fictional texts, we will explore the ways in which the narrative dynamics of each strive to influence the formation of the ethical self in the reader. In the class we will read prose by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Lev Tolstoy, Vladimir Nabokov, Witold Gombrowicz, Danilo Kis and J.D. Salinger, as well as non-fiction narratives by Truman Capote, Paul Theroux, Richard Kapuscinski and Anna Politkovskaya among others. Our study will be supplemented and guided by theoretical works in the field of narrative ethics, including Mikhail Bakhtin, Richard Rorty, Martha Nussbaum and Adam Z. Newton. Students will be evaluated on the basis of written assignments such as essays, participation in class discussions, oral presentations, a midterm, and a final research paper.
Topical Outline
The following is a representative outline. Appropriate texts and other material illustrating the various topics will be chosen at the discretion of the instructor. 1. Introduction. Contemporary Narrative Ethics. Geoffrey Galt Harpham, “Ethics”; Martha C. Nussbaum, “Perceptive Equilibrium: Literary Theory and Ethical Theory”. 2. Lev Tolstoy, Death and Narrative; Lev Tolstoy, “The Death of Ivan Il’ich”; Peter Brooks, “Freud’s Masterplot: A Model for Narrative”; Jean-Paul Sartre, What is Literature?; Lev Tolstoy, “What is Art?”. 3. Fyodor Dostoevsky: A Writer of Ideas or a Writer of Ideas? Fyodor Dostoevsky, “The Meek One”; Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, excerpts. 4. The Dangers of Aesthetic Bliss: Narrative Ethics in the Prose of Vladimir Nabokov. Vladimir Nabokov, “On Dostoevsky”; “Spring in Fialta”; “The Vane Sisters”; Richard Rorty, “The Barber of Kasbeam: Nabokov and Cruelty”. 5. The Tyranny of Form: Narrative Ethics in the Prose of Witold Gombrowicz. Witold Gombrowicz, Cosmos; Diary, excerpts; Adam Z. Newton, Narrative Ethics, excerpts. 6. Far and Beyond: J.D. Salinger and Herman Melville. J.D. Salinger, Seymour: An Introduction; Herman Melville, “Bartleby the Scrivener”. 7. Non-Fiction: Truth or Fiction? Mas’ud Zavarzadeh, The Mythopoetic Reality: Post-War American Non-Fiction Novel, John Hartsock, “‘Literary Journalism’ as an Epistemological Moving Object Within a Larger ‘Quantum’ Narrative”. 8. Who Cares About Factual Accuracy?: Exploiting the Author- Subject Relationship. Truman Capote, In Cold Blood; Thomas G. Couser, Vulnerable Subjects: Ethics and Life Writing. 9. Facing the Everyday Exotic: Reporters as Translators of Cultures. Paul Theroux, The Great Railway Bazaar; Ryszard Kapuscinski, Shadow of the Sun. 10. Fairy-tales From Hell: (Non)fiction Accounts of Totalitarian Systems. Hanna Krall, The Woman from Hamburg and Other True Stories; Danilo Kis, A Tomb for Boris Davidovich.