Reading & Composition

In the opening section of his work Poetics, Aristotle moves from a brief discussion of means of representation to a focus on objects of representation that persists throughout his text. Although Aristotle’s theory of mimesis would be considered by many as a blueprint for fashioning narrative fiction through this focus on the objects and human actions that language allegedly refers to, this course examines how many 20th-century modernist literary projects appear at odds with Aristotle’s theory, while seeking to build narrative art on the basis of altogether new aesthetic premises. Moreover, the modernists viewed language as an aesthetic medium and oftentimes borrowed techniques from the visual arts in their exploration of narrative language’s many potential uses. This course thus seeks to fill the gap in narrative aesthetics set in motion by Aristotle’s theory of mimesis by studying the modernist literary techniques of the 1920’s that forever changed fiction despite the persistence of Aristotle’s ideas. As a way of critiquing Aristotle’s influential theory, this course grasps narrative language as an aesthetic medium in itself, not as a mode of representation that merely imitates action in the world. This course furthermore argues that narrative is not a host of symbols that stand for things we already know. In contrast, the epistemological function of narrative art (especially in the context of modernist literary experiments) is more complex and ambitious than often assumed. After looking at Aristotle’s Poetics, we will examine continental modernism to gain a better understanding of the actual materials of narrative art and their diverse functions. For example, we will examine the modernist literary experiments of authors like Joyce and Woolf through close reading, learning how to both decipher these authors’ literary techniques while constructing original arguments about the latter. We will look at how modernist literary experiments take place at the crossroads of experience, perception, and the formation of knowledge of the world. Modernist narrative language arguably creates the image of completely new matter in the texts under discussion through the construction of worlds unbound from plot and semantics. We also wish to examine how modernist literary techniques and effects differ from those used in painting, sculpture, music, dance, as well as other aesthetic mediums.

Course texts:

Aristotle, The Poetics

Baudelaire, The Flowers of Evil

Mallarmé, Selected Poetry and Prose

Joyce, Ulysses

Woolf, Jacob’s Room

Nabokov, Lolita