Third-World Bildungsroman

(Lecture). This course examines the phenomenon of the proliferation of the Bildungsroman, the “coming-of-age” novel, as one of the most prominent literary forms in the world today. The genre is historically associated in the European tradition with the emergence of modernity and the problems of modern socialization; we will consider the factors and pressures that have contributed to its rise in the rest of the world-including, imperialism, human rights, and globalization. If the Bildungsroman traditionally tells the story of the development of modern individualism, its success in the “Third World” often complicates and challenges the cultural, political, social, racial, economic, and gender assumptions that lie behind the European model. Likely novels include: Ama Ata Aidoo’s Our Sister Killjoy; Arturo Arias’s After the Bombs; Tahar ben Jelloun’s The Sand Child; Medhi Charef’s Tea in the Harem; Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions; Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory; Romesh Gunesekera’s Reef; Turki al-Hamad’s Adama; Khaled Hosseini’s Kite Runner; Cheik Hamidou Kane’s Ambiguous Adventure; Joseph Zobel’s Black Shack Alley. We will also be reading literary and critical theory on the novel form, development, and the “third world” by Adorno, Bakhtin, Beverley, Bhabha, Booth, Chatman, Das, Deleuze and Guattari, Delgado, Derrida, Dorfman, Fanon, Freire, Genette, Harlow, Harvey, Hegel, Jameson, Lyotard, Maran, Martin Baro, Marx, Moretti, Nietzsche, Rodney, Ricoeur, Rousseau, Said, Sartre, Spivak, Viswanathan, Watt, Wheeler, Wittgenstein.