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CLS2790/3790

Postmodernism and the novel

Proposed to be offered next in 1998

Millicent Vladiv-Glover

8 points
* 3 hours per week
* Clayton

Objectives On successful completion of this subject, students will have become acquainted with approaches to the study of postmodern literary and other artistic texts (music, film, painting etc), based on philosophical, semiotic and psychoanalytic models, privileged by poststructural critical theory. With the aid of this knowledge, students will be able to undertake independent deconstructive analyses of texts.

Synopsis The subject will focus on the dominant themes and motifs in contemporary Australian, American and European fiction in order to answer the question: what is postmodernism? The subject will raise issues such as the relationship of postmodernism to its antecedents in European literature and culture, the place of the novel in the contemporary critical debate, and the relationship of narrative to knowledge and the legitimation of meaning. Various aspects of the contemporary novel, such as the `exotic,' the `erotic' and the `shocking,' will be examined in concrete textual analysis and in the context of the new poetics of `magic realism,' aesthetic pluralism and a `zero' subject.

Assessment second year Written (5000 words): 70%
* Examination (1 hour): 30%

Assessment third year Written (5000 words): 70%
* Examination (1 hour): 30%
* An additional 3000-word essay is required from students taking the subject at 12-point level
* Third-year level students will write essays which require more theoretical reflection and presuppose a wider reading than essays written by students enrolled at second-year level.

Prescribed texts

Bellow S More die of heartbreak Penguin, 1988

Bitov A Pushkin house Farrar Strauss and Giroux, 1987

Blanchot M Madness of the day Station Hill, 1981

Eco U The name of the rose Picador, 1987

Foucault M Foucault/Blanchot Zone Books, 1987

Hall R Captivity captive McPhee Gribble, 1988

Kis D Hourglass Farrar Strauss and Giroux

Pavic M The dictionary of the Khazars Knopf, 1988

Scepanovic B Mouth full of earth Longship, 1980

Suskind P Perfume Penguin, 1987

Recommended texts

Baudrillard J Selected writings Polity Press, 1992

Huyssen A After the great divide: Modernism, mass culture, postmodernism Bloomington, 1986

Jameson F Postmodernism, or the cultural logic of late capitalism Verso, 1988

Lyotard J-F The postmodern condition: A report on knowledge Manchester U P, 1989

Milner A and others (eds) Postmodern conditions Berg, 1990


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