ENGL 640
Studies in Fiction
Fall 2023 · It’s Alive! Life Writing and its Variations
Topics
- Life-writing and autofiction
- Narrative temporality
- Point of view
- Repetition and divided selves
- Fictionality
Readings
- Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders.
- Stuart Sherman, Telling Time, section on Defoe.
- Virginia Woolf, essays on Defoe in The Common Reader; Orlando; A Room of One’s Own.
- Marion Milner, A Life of One’s Own.
- Thomas Ogden, “On Holding and Containing.”
- Montaigne, selections.
- Eliza Haywood, Love in Excess.
- Thomas Manganaro, Against Better Judgment.
- Nicholas Paige, Before Fiction.
- Dorrit Cohn, work on the autobiographical contract.
- James Hogg, Confessions of a Justified Sinner.
- Ingeborg Bachmann, Malina.
- Barbara Johnson, Persons and Things.
- Jonathan Goldberg, Being of Two Minds.
- Encyclopedia of Autobiography, selections on life-writing, autofiction and autotheory.
- Helen Garner, Monkey Grip and selected nonfiction/diaries.
- Chris Kraus, I Love Dick and Video Green.
- Maggie Nelson, The Art of Cruelty and The Argonauts.
- Lauren Berlant, On the Inconvenience of Other People.
- Annie Ernaux, The Years; Rachel Cusk on Ernaux.
Sources
- Course catalogue ↗2026–2027
- Official course page ↗Fall 2023
- Departmental seminar description with reading information when supplied; not a full syllabus. Historical Fall 2023. These are named reading clusters; course page does not specify purchase requirements.