What is “postmodern” fiction? What characterizes it? While there is no single answer to these questions, one thing we can say is that it rejected traditional story lines or plots. Aristotle famously described the “proper structure of the plot” as having “a beginning, a middle, and an end.” Post-modern writers beg to differ, playing with the narrative line, devising new ways to present their vision of the world.

In this course we will read four novels by well-known writers who experimented with traditional narrative structures in order to tell the story of particular historical moments: Virginia Woolf’s Between the Acts, set in June 1939 on the eve of WWII; Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient, set in 1945 at the end of WWII; Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, located squarely in early 1960s United States; and JM Coetzee’s In the Heart of the Country, set in the depths of South Africa during apartheid. At the end we will read some short fictions by Jorge Luis Borges.

Students will be expected to come to class with passages from the novels they wish to discuss and questions or comments about them. We will use these as the starting point for our discussion of the novels.