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Research Seminar: Rhetoric and Narration

course description

Our framework for this seminar will be the intersections between rhetoric and literary criticism: theories of narrative and narration not just as literary practices but as rhetorical strategies. Most literary criticism treats narration as simply one more facet of a literary artifact; rhetorical criticism treats narration as a motivated act, the product of a particular rhetorical situation. It approaches narratives as rhetorical transactions between narrators and narratees or authors and readers, which means paying attention to overlap and/or gaps between protagonist, narrator, implied author, and actual author, and between implied and actual readers.

We'll orient ourselves in this range of approaches by reading some contemporary theoretical and critical material, but our main focus will be discussing novels from a variety of historical periods (from the eighteenth century to the present) and national/cultural positions (British, American, anglophone/postcolonial). Rather than covering a chunk of literary history defined by period and nation, we'll be trying out a set of critical possibilities and seeing what those possibilities actually get us when we apply them to different kinds of text.

readings

We'll be reading eight novels drawn from the following list:

course requirements

In addition to writing and presenting the research paper (see below), you'll be expected to keep up with the reading (there will be a lot of it!), contribute thoughtfully and frequently to in-class discussion, post to the class's online discussion board, and probably do some other brief informal writing assignments as well.

research paper

The major project for this course will be a 10-15 page research paper with an argumentative thesis dealing with one or two of the novels we read in class. Which aspects of the novel(s) a paper takes on will be up to the writer; we'll take some time, both in class and in individual conferences, to sort through options and anticipate possible pitfalls of various approaches. The topic will need to be something within the general field of narrative and rhetorical theory — but, as we'll be talking about in class, that's a pretty big field, so there should still be lots of room for writers to stake out a particular piece of territory they find interesting.

The paper must also engage the critical work of other scholars: at least five secondary sources, including at least one scholarly journal article and one full-length book. Secondary material we read in class is fair game, but doesn't count towards the five-source minimum.

In addition to writing the paper itself, writers will present abstracts of their papers to the class and will present 7-8 pages from their papers to the university community at the end-of-semester seminar symposium (so members of each of the two seminars will get to see what the folks in the other seminar have been up to).

last updated: Wednesday, 23-Jan-2008 15:25:55 CST

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