Paradigms of the European Novel: From the Picaresque Novel to Surrealism, with Defoe, Goethe, Balzac and Kafka in Between
In the wealth of plots, characters, settings and narrative strategies it has generated over the course of three centuries, the European novel has proved to be one of the most inventive and resilient forms of Western literature. Certain paradigms have predominated from the beginning, two of which will form the center of this course: the illusion of a “true” story and the bourgeois family as an organizing narrative principle. Novels include Robinson Crusoe, Pamela, Sorrows of Young Werther, Père Goriot, Amerika and Nadja. Critical texts by major theorists of the novel– Auerbach, Watt, Bakhtin, Moretti. All readings and discussions in English.
