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DEGREE REGULATIONS & PROGRAMMES OF STUDY 2011/2012
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DRPS : Course Catalogue : School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures : English Literature

Postgraduate Course: Acts of Story-Telling: Narrator, Text, Audience (ENLI11134)

Course Outline
SchoolSchool of Literatures, Languages and Cultures CollegeCollege of Humanities and Social Science
Course typeStandard AvailabilityNot available to visiting students
Credit level (Normal year taken)SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) Credits20
Home subject areaEnglish Literature Other subject areaNone
Course website None Taught in Gaelic?No
Course descriptionThis course will challenge students to approach published works from the point of view of a practitioner and generate a discourse uniquely suited to analyzing fictional texts with an eye towards writing them. The course will deploy and foster such an analytic practice by examining fictional texts where the act of story-telling is explicitly incorporated into the narrative itself. By approaching fictional texts as acts of story-telling, we will examine selected works with a particular emphasis on how the interplay between narrator and audience shapes the story. Analyzing the dynamic relationship between story-teller and audience in each text, students will grapple with the crucial and complex role narrative voice plays in propelling a plot, developing characters, engaging readers, and inscribing $ůmeaning.&©
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites Co-requisites
Prohibited Combinations Other requirements None
Additional Costs None
Course Delivery Information
Delivery period: 2011/12 Semester 1, Not available to visiting students (SS1) WebCT enabled:  Yes Quota:  30
Location Activity Description Weeks Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday
No Classes have been defined for this Course
First Class First class information not currently available
Additional information Fridays 10-12, Room 1.12, 18 Buccleuch Place
or 2-4
No Exam Information
Summary of Intended Learning Outcomes
Students will acquire knowledge of a range of fictional texts in which story-telling is thematized as a practice. They will be able to locate and situate how point-of-view and narrative voice operate in a fictional text and analyze how the interplay between narrator and audience impacts other elements (plot, character, dialogue, setting, etc.). They will be able to demonstrate familiarity with critical and theoretical debates about what role the reader plays in generating $ůmeaning&© and gain an understanding of the different perspectives on prose fiction of reader, critic, and practitioner. They will have been encouraged to develop a self-critical creative practice through reflection on the relationship between reading critically and writing creatively.
Assessment Information
1 x 4,000-word essay: 100%
Special Arrangements
None
Additional Information
Academic description Not entered
Syllabus Schedule:
WEEK 1: Mark Twain: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
WEEK 2: Muriel Spark: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
WEEK 3: Edith Wharton: Ethan Frome
WEEK 4: James Salter: A Sport and A Pastime
WEEK 5: Toni Morrison: Jazz
WEEK 6: Louise Erdrich: Tracks
WEEK 7: John Fowles: The French Lieutenant&©s Woman
WEEK 8: Vladimir Nabokov: Lolita
WEEK 9: Italo Calvino: Invisible Cities
WEEK 10: Clarice Lispector: The Hour of the Star
Transferable skills Not entered
Reading list Primary Texts:
Mark Twain: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Muriel Spark: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Edith Wharton: Ethan Frome
James Salter: A Sport and A Pastime
Toni Morrison: Jazz
Louise Erdrich: Tracks
John Fowles: The French Lieutenant&©s Woman
Vladimir Nabokov: Lolita
Italo Calvino: Invisible Cities
Clarice Lispector: The Hour of the Star

Secondary Texts:
Adorno, Theodor W. Aesthetic Theory. Minneapolis, Minnesota UP: 1997.
Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. Orion, 1964.
Calvino, Italo. Six Memos for the Next Millennium. Vintage, 1993.
Cixous, Hélčne. Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing. New York, Columbia UP: 1994.
de Man, Paul. Allegories of Reading: Figural Language in Rosseau, Nietzsche, Rilke, and
Proust. New Haven: Yale UP, 1979.
Derrida, Jacques. The Ear of the Other: Otobiography, Transference, Translations: Texts
and Discussions with Jacques Derrida, trans. Peggy Kamuf. New York: Schocken, 1986.
Felman, Shoshana and Dori Laub. Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature,
Psychoalanysis, and History. Routledge, 1992.
Felman, Shoshana. What Does A Woman Want? Reading and Sexual Difference.
Johns Hopkins, UP, 1993.
Fish, Stanley. Is There a Text in this Class?: The Authority of Interpretive Communities.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1980.
Gourevitch, Philip. The Paris Review Interviews. Canongate, 2009.
Hutcheon, Linda. Narcissistic Narrative: The Metafictional Paradox. Routledge, 1980.
James, Henry. The Letters of Henry James. Percy Lubbock, Ed. BiblioBazaar, 2009.
Johnson, Barbara. The Critical Difference: Essays in the Contemporary Rhetoric of Reading.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1980.
Laplanche, John. Essays on Otherness. Ed. John Fletcher. Routledge, 1999.
Lucy, Niall. Postmodern Literary Theory: An Anthology. Blackwell: Oxford, 2000.
Morrison, Toni. What Moves at the Margin. UP Mississippi, 2008.
Sand, Georges. The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters. Hard Press, 2006.
Strachey, James. $ůSome Unconscious Factors in Reading&©, International Journal of Psycho-
Analysis, 2 (1930), pp. 130-43.
Watt, Ian. The Rise of the Novel. California UP, 1957.
Wharton, Edith. The Writing of Fiction. Scribner, 1924.
Zamora, Lois Parkingson and Wendy B. Faris, Eds. Magical Realism: Theory, History,
Community. Duke UP, 1995.
Study Abroad Not entered
Study Pattern Not entered
KeywordsStory-telling narrator text audience writing fiction
Contacts
Course organiserDr Allyson Stack
Tel: (0131 6)50 4290
Email: allyson.stack@ed.ac.uk
Course secretaryMs June Haigh
Tel: (0131 6)50 3612
Email: j.haigh@ed.ac.uk
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