Senior Seminar
From Myth to Magical Realism
Literature has always been linked to fantasy and magic, even as it has sought to imitate or approximate reality. The goal of the course is to reflect on the fantastical or derealizing impulse in literary narrative, from ancient myth, the folk tale and medieval romance to the revival of the fantastical in nineteenth-century romanticism and early realism, before moving finally to three 20th-century novels from Russia, Cuba and India, whose “magical realism” can be read as arising out of the productive collision between the pressures of modern history and the archaic legacies of myth and oral storytelling. Structuralist, formalist, and other critical approaches to myth and fantasy will be explored. Authors to be read include E.T.A. Hoffmann, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Bulgakov, Carpentier and Rusdhie. Critical readings will include Levi-Strauss, Propp, Todorov, Northrop Frye, Bakhtin, and Jameson.
BOOKS:
Edith Hamilton, Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes 0-316-34151-7
Vladimir Propp, Morphology of the Folktale, 13: 978-0292783768
Chretien de Troye, Yvain. Knight of the Lion, 0-300-038380-0
E.T.A. Hoffmann, Tales of E.T.A. Hoffmann, 0-226-34789-3
Nikolai Gogol, The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol, 0-375-70615-1
Fedor Dostoevsky, The Double and the Gambler, 987-0-375-71901-1
Mikhail Bulgakov, Master and Margarita, 0-14-118014-5
Alejo Carpentier, The Kingdom of this World, 0-374-52197-2
Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children, 0-14-013270-8