Reading & Composition

Reading & Composition

Trivial Pursuits: Irrelevance in Literature
Course Number: 
R1B.002
Course Catalog Number: 
19404
Course Type or Level: 
Instructor: 
Wendi Bootes
Days: 
MWF
Time: 
11-12:00
Semester: 
Location: 
3 Evans

Laurence Sterne’s memoirs famously took three volumes to arrive at the account of his own birth; Robert Walser wrote nearly 100 pages about walking; Sigmund Freud divined innumerable secrets from the “rubbish-heap” of his observations. In this course, we’ll ask what trifles, trash, tangents and other distractions are doing in some otherwise serious (and some not-so-serious) novels, poems, plays, films, and treatises. How do we come to judge objects as undeserving of our attention in the first place? One of
our aims will be to re-examine insignificance, indifference, and inconsequentiality as critically productive means of analyzing literary and social hierarchies. We’ll consider what happens when sleuths meet red herrings, gentlemen murder flowers, the winding of a clock ruins everything, and nothing comes of nothing. We’ll ask what makes a trifle more than just a trifle, and inquire after some of the effects an attention to irrelevance can have on form and style: exhaustive description, microscopic close-ups, inappropriate interruptions, and harrowingly close analysis.

This is a Reading and Composition course. As we sift through the rubbish-heaps of our own observations, we’ll work to hone our close-reading skills and to craft clear, compelling, and relevant arguments about how texts work. To that end, substantial class time will be devoted to writing workshops and peer reviews. In addition to completing frequent essay assignments and revisions, students will be expected to read up to 100 pages of literary and scholarly texts each week, and to participate actively in class and virtual discussions.

Likely texts include:

Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy (selections)
Nikolai Gogol, “The Nose”
Ivan Goncharov, Oblomov (selections)
Arthur Conan Doyle (selected Sherlock stories)
Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams
Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth
Alfred Döblin, “The Murder of a Buttercup”
Robert Walser’s The Walk
Clarice Lispector (selected stories)