Comedic Fiction and Writing

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

Modern Comedic Fiction and Comedic Fiction Writing. This is a class that studies the work of leading writers of comedic fiction with an eye towards helping us develop our own skills as creators of written comedic content. The class will oscillate between close reading and analysis of literary comedic masters on the one hand, and our own attempts to apply their insights in structured writing assignments on the other. Aside from reading theoretical works about literary comedic fiction as an art form, we scrutinize works by authors such as Paul Beatty, Fran Ross, Helen DeWitt, Philip Roth, Percival Everett, Tony Tulathimuitte, Tom Wolfe, Vladimir Nabokov, Zadie Smith, Howard Jacobson, Jane Smiley, Julia May Jonas, Pola Oloixarac and David Lodge, among others. Students will be given ample opportunity to analyze the comedic techniques of these writers, and invent their own. They will participate in exercises that will introduce them to the joys and challenges of trying to be funny through the written–as opposed to the spoken–word.