The course I am co-teaching with Natalya Bekhta on “The Future of the Novel” is nearing its final stages, with the most recent classes on Bulgarian author Gospodinov’s Time Shelter and Polish author Tokarczuk’s The House of Day, the House of Night, and the final class in a few weeks on Norwegian author Rimbereid’s Solaris corrected. Full updated syllabus below and in this pdf.

Today (25 March), instead of a regular class, our students are listening in to a guest lecture by Eric Hayot on “The End of Aesthetic History” (in collaboration with Narrare) – brilliant perspectives on centuries of aesthetic history, and on the position of the humanities and literary studies in the twentieth century and into the present century.

The future of the novel: New literary forms beyond the centres / Syllabus

The course consists of: 1) lectures 2) individual tasks 3) an open book exam.

Reading requirements: regular theory readings and extracts from literary texts AND one book of your choosing from the reading list.

Abstract

The novel is the globally dominant genre of prose fiction today. How is it being transformed in the twenty-first century? And what new literary forms are being developed in European cultural peripheries? This course addresses these questions by offering a broad introduction to new formalism and contemporary theories of world literature, and through a series of diverse literary readings. The focus of the literary readings will be on literature beyond the current centres of the international literary field, especially literature from continental European peripheries: texts from Ukrainian and Polish contexts, from rural France and the Swedish smalltown, among others. The texts will be read in excerpts in English translation.

Literary texts will act as key resources and the students will be asked to actively reflect on the ways literary forms are tied to the socio-cultural functions of literary works. Regular theory reading and active participation are required. The evaluation will be based on participation, course work, and an open-book exam.

The course will provide students with a thorough understanding of contemporary debates on literary form and world literature, and will enable to understand how new literature from beyond the centres is pushing the boundaries of the contemporary novel. The overall objective of the course is to help shape a better awareness of literature as an integral part of society and a key element of the way we construct notions of identity, memory, language, ethics, politics – and, in short, social reality.

Course outline

1.Introduction 1
Introduction. Forms of twenty-first century literature. New Formalism.
Reading: Caroline Levine: “Introduction: the Affordances of Form.” In Forms: whole, rhythm, hierarchy, network.  Princeton UP, 2015.

2. Introduction 2
The novel within the twenty-first century literary field. World literature.
Reading: Mariano Siskind: Siskind, Mariano. “The genres of world literature. The case of magical realism.” The Routledge Companion to World Literature. 2012.

3. Machine Forms : À La Ligne
Literary reading : excerpt from Joseph Ponthus 2019/2021: On the Line (À La ligne).
Theory reading: Kai Mikkonen: The Plot Machine, 14-27, 32-40.

4. Polyphony: Osebol
Voice, authenticity, and polyphony
Literary reading: excerpt from Marit Kapla 2019: Osebol.  // Marit Kapla 2019/2021: Osebol. Voices from a Swedish village.
Theory reading: Mariano D’Ambrosio 2019: “Fragmentary writing and polyphonic narratives in twenty-first-century fiction” in The Poetics of Fragmentation. pp. 19-25, 31-32

5. Narrative: Mondegreen
Focus on form: the novel, satire and narrative form
Literary reading: excerpt from Rafeyenko, Volodymyr. Mondegreen: Songs about Death and Love. Translated by Mark Andryczyk. Cambridge (MA): HURI Books, 2022. Pages: 45-60.
Theory reading: Walsh, Richard. “Narrative Theory for Complexity Scientists” in Narrating Complexity, eds. Richard Walsh and Susan Stepney. Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2018. Pages: 11-19 [until Section 3 “Implications”].

6. Capital: Time Shelter
Focus on world-literary context: literary value and aesthetic capital
Literary reading: excerpt from Gospodinov, Georgi. Time Shelter. Translated from the Bulgarian by Angela Rodel. Weidenfeld & Nicolson: 2022.
Theory reading: Vermeulen, Pieter. “New York, Capital of World Literature? On Holocaust Memory and World Literary Value.” Anglia 135.1 (2017): 67-85.

7. Experiment: The House of Day, the House of Night
“Experimental novel”, literary experiment
Literary reading: excerpt from Olga Tokarczuk, The House of Day, the House of Night (1998)

8. Guest lecture by Eric Hayot: “The End of Aesthetic History; or, Provincializing Modernism”

9. Conclusion: Solaris corrected
Epic, future language, concluding remarks
Literary reading: excerpt from Øyvind Rimbereid 2004/2011: Solaris korrigert / Solaris corrected
Theory reading: Ursula Heise: “Science Fiction and the Time Scales of the Anthropocene.” 275-276, 281-282, 301.

10. Open book exam

This spring, I’m teaching a course on forms and fuctions of the contemporary novel, together with Natalya Bekhta.
We focus specifically on non-English texts from what can be considered continental European peripheries.

After two introductory classes, we discussed Joseph Ponthus’s novel À la ligne (On the Line) and most recently Marit Kapla’s Osebol.

Our next sessions will discuss Volodymyr Rafeyenko‘s Mondegreen, Georgi Gospodinov’s Time Shelter, Olga Tokarczuk’s The House of Day, the House of Night, and Øyvind Rimbereid’s Solaris corrected..

Course introduction below:

How is the novel being transformed in the twenty-first century? And what new literary forms are being developed in European cultural peripheries? This course addresses these questions by offering a broad introduction to new formalism and contemporary theories of world literature, and through a series of diverse literary readings.

In Monopoli, Italy, today to present a tentative classification of functions of literary space. Wide array of presentations on rhythm, speed and path at the ENN7 / 7th conference of the European Narratology Network. Looking forward also to participate in the co-located IGLE conference, conference of the International Society for the Empirical Study of Literature.

In my presentation, I continue earlier work on the city novel and toponyms in literature. In brief, I note that – despite a long-lived spatial turn – questions of space have remained relatively marginalized and theoretically underdeveloped. A classification of spatial markers in literature would include a keen attentiveness to the dynamic interaction between space and character, space and plot, and character and plot. It should also aim to incorporate processes of mapping within the narration, as well as the rhetorical interaction between spatial markers and (embodied and embedded readerly responses).

Abstract below:

Functions of Literary Space: Tentative Classifications

This paper examines the functions of spatial markers and locations in literature, and considers several tentative qualifications for the study of literary space. A first classification draws on James Phelan’s character classification of synthetic, mimetic, and thematic functions to examine the functions of literary spaces. A second classification (building on earlier work by the author on the city novel) pairs literary space with plot development and character development in a dynamic model in which all three influence upon each other, enabling the fulfilment (or thwarting) of their respective affordances. A third classification proposes an allegorical reading, in which functions of literary space can be read respectively as referential, allegorical, moral, spiritual, or metafictional. A fourth and final classification distinguishes between functions within the text and rhetorical functions, in which spatial markers act not as real-world referents, or as functions within the storyworld, but as activating associations within readers in ways that are highly contingent. I will consider these tentative classifications and their practical application by drawing on the work of French-Canadian author Nicolas Dickner, in particular his novels Nikolski (2005), Tarmac (2009), and Six degrés de liberté (2015). One aim is to move beyond spatial markers as statical elements of description, and to foreground instead the functions of dynamic spatial trajectories, spatial transgressions, and dynamic meshworks of spatial nodes.