Readings

Required Readings

Almost all of the required reading selections can be found in the Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Ed. Volumes C, D, E. Check the calendar for page numbers and to know when we are reading each work. Additional reading assignments can be downloaded here. All reading assignments will be the basis for reading notes and small-group class discussions.

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Extra Credit Readings

These books are available in the UNG Oconee Library. The bulleted items are sections of the books you can read for extra credit. Read a selection and then write a one-page response detailing how it informs your reading of one of our works for this course. This is a difficult task because you must think theoretically about the way you are reading, your method of reading, not just WHAT you are reading: In order to receive extra credit for this task, your report must make direct reference to the outside reading selection and one of the works for the course and also explain how they are connected. Of course, polished writing is a must, and a report that goes beyond the minimum length will be more strongly considered.

Booth, Wayne. The Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction. Berkley: University of California Press, 1988.
  • Chapter 5: "Who Is Responsible in Ethical Criticism, and for What?"
  • Chapter 6: "Implied Authors as Friends and Pretenders"
Chatman, Seymour Benjamin. Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978.
  • Chapter 4: Discourse: Nonnarrated Stories
  • Chapter 5: Discourse: Covert versus Overt Narrators
Daiches, David. The Novel and the Modern World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960.
  • Chapter 1: Selection and "Significance"
  • Chapter 2: Character
Davis, Todd F. and Kenneth Womack, eds. Mapping the Ethical Turn: A Reader in Ethics, Culture, and Literary Theory. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2001.
  • Booth, Wayne. "Why Ethical Criticism Can Never Be Simple" pp. 16-29
  • Phelan, James. "Sethe’s Choice: Beloved and the Ethics of Reading" pp. 93-109
  • Miller, J. Hillis. "How to Be ‘in Tune with the Right’ in The Golden Bowl" pp. 271-86
Forster, E. M. Aspects of the Novel. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1954.
  • Chapter IV: People (continued)
  • Chapter V: The Plot
Frank, Joseph. The Idea of Spatial Form. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1991.
  • Chapter 1: "Spatial Form in Modern Literature"
Fuller, Edmund. Man in Modern Fiction: Some Minority Opinions on Contemporary American Writing. New York: Random House, 1958.
  • Chapter 1: "Three Images of Man"
Gardner, John. On Moral Fiction. New York: Basic Books, 1978.
  • "Moral Fiction" pp. 105-126
  • "Moral Criticism" pp. 127-146
Hoffman, Michael J. and Patrick D. Murphy, eds. Essentials of the Theory of Fiction. 3rd Ed. Durham: Duke University Press, 2005.
  • Chapter 2: Virginia Woolf, "Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown"
  • Chapter 7: Wayne Booth, "Distance and Point of View: An Essay in Classification"
Levenson, Michael H. Modernism and the Fate of Individuality: Character and Novelistic Form from Conrad to Woolf. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
  • Chapter 6: "From the Epic To the Lighthouse"
Lewis, C. S. An Experiment in Criticism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961.
  • Chapters I-IV (as a group)
  • Chapter XI: The Experiment
Miller, J. Hillis. The Ethics of Reading. New York: Columbia University Press, 1987.
  • Chapter 1: "Reading Doing Reading"
  • Chapter 6: "Re-Reading Re-Vision: James and Benjamin"
O’Connor, Flannery. Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose. Eds. Sally Fitzgerald and Robert Fitzgerald. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000.
  • "Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction" pp. 36-50
  • "The Nature and Aim of Fiction" pp. 63-86
  • "Writing Short Stories" pp. 87-106
Phelan, James. Living to Tell About It: A Rhetoric and Ethics of Character Narration. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004.
  • Chapter 1: "The Implied Author, Unreliability, and Ethical Positioning"
  • Chapter 2: "Dual Focalization, Discourse as Story, and Ethics"
Phelan, James. Narrative as Rhetoric: Technique, Audiences, Ethics, Ideology. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1996.
  • Chapter 5: "Reexamining Reliability: The Multiple Functions of Nick Carraway"
Phelan, James, ed. Reading Narrative: Form, Ethics, Ideology. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1989.
  • Booth, Wayne. "Are Narrative Choices Subject to Ethical Criticism?" pp. 57-78
  • Miller, J. Hillis. "Is There an Ethics of Reading?" pp. 79-101
Scholes, Robert and Robert Kellogg. The Nature of Narrative. New York: Oxford University Press, 1966.
  • Chapter 5: "Character in Narrative"
  • Chapter 6: "Plot in Narrative"
  • Chapter 7: "Point of View in Narrative"
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