ENGL 232 - Southern Fiction

Institution:

University of Richmond

Subject:

Description:

Fiction of both old and new South with attention to themes, techniques and perspectives of the region. Prerequisite(s): English 103 with a grade of C or better or exemption. General Education Requirement: (FSLT) Unit(s): 1 Additional Information: The South of myth and the South of history have combined to produce a literature fascinating in both its range and conflicting images. Issues of familial and communal heritage, conceptions of place and region, and relations among various racial and ethnic groups are among the most prominent and pressing themes in Southern fiction, but since such might be said of any regional American fiction, this course asks, what makes this fiction "Southern" We can begin to understand some of the oppositions constructed in the Old South and represented in its fiction "between blacks and whites, the landed gentry and the yeoman farmer, the strict gender roles of ladies and gentlemen" by examining particularly Southern attitudes toward honor and the land in works by Thomas Nelson Page, Charles Chesnutt, and Kate Chopin. To chart the evolution of Southern fiction from the romantic rhetorical mode to the modern dialectical mode, the course investigates the effects of changing social conditions and new fictional forms on representations of the South by writers such as William Faulkner, Ellen Glasgow, Peter Taylor, Jean Toomer, Robert Penn Warren, Eudora Welty, and Richard Wright. The final weeks of the semester focus on the following questions: Is today's South more a matter of social perception than social distinction Is there anything still "Southern" We may find answers in contemporary fiction by such writers as Ernest Gaines, Ellen Gilchrist, Josephine Humphreys, Randall Kenan, and Jill McCorkle.

Credits:

3.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.richmond.edu

Phone Number:

(804) 289-8000

Regional Accreditation:

Southern Association of Colleges and Schools

Calendar System:

Semester

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