James Joyce and the Modern Novel

One measure of James Joyce's achievement as a writer is his influence (as an inspiration, an antagonist, or a competitor) on novelists who came after him. Our primary concern will be with Joyce's formal innovations: How did his audacious narrative experiments transform the novel as a genre? Do his stylistic games break with the realistic tradition or expose its linguistic and epistemological workings? In addition to Dubliners , Portrait of the Artist , and Ulysses , we will read novels by Woolf, Faulkner, Beckett, and Nabokov. Enrollment limited to 20. Not open to first-year students. Instructor permission required.