Fictional Fictions

In this course we will engage with novels whose primary focus is the novel itself—how the genre is imagined, structured, written, sold, read, celebrated, and denounced. Our chosen meta-fictions will variously focus on the psychology of artistic production, on the philosophical issues surrounding the telling of “true lies,” on the social function of novels in our culture, and on what is at stake in the supposedly private act of reading. Our texts will include works such as Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, McEwan’s Atonement, Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair, Cunningham’s The Hours, and DeLillo’s Mao II. This course counts as an ENAM elective.