Reading & Composition

This course will examine the history of found documents as a literary device, i.e., stories that are told through an accumulation of texts, often “found” and assembled by the author or narrator. We will delve into the history of epistolary literature (from the Heroides to Dracula) as well as experimental tales conveyed through pieces of poetry, critical reviews, and footnotes (e.g., Pale Fire, City of Saints and Madmen). We will also consider the tradition of found documents in speculative fiction (especially horror), in which the mysterious origins of certain documents--and the gaps between texts--tantalize us with the prospect of the unknown and the sublime. Many of these texts will seem rather like puzzles that require a great deal of exertion and involvement from the reader, resulting in a reading practice that can feel highly dialogic. This course will teach students to conduct careful close readings while considering differences between form and content (for instance, by asking why an author might choose a particular a form--such as the letter, or an invented academic text--to tell a specific story), and how to form original critical
arguments that will ultimately generate cogent essays exploring relationships between different literary traditions.

Texts may include:
Selections from Ovid’s Heroides
Selections from the letters of Abelard and Héloïse
Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
Dracula by Bram Stoker
Selections from City of Saints and Madmen by Jeff VanderMeer
Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson
Wylding Hall by Elizabeth Hand
The Drowning Girl by Caitlín R. Kiernan
Short stories by H.P. Lovecraft, Jorge Luis Borges, Michael Blumlein, Carmen Maria Machado, Helen Oyeyemi