ENGLISH 330 - Exploration and Travel Narratives,Self and Other

Institution:

Reed College

Subject:

Description:

A study of voyaging, exile, and homecoming in a range of narratives, from epic, drama, fiction, and travel writing. These are "liminal" texts, with figures who cross borders, and who may transgress against the familiar and fantasize a freedom otherwise denied to them. There are twin interests here: on the new land to be explored and its people, and on the consciousness of the explorer. We will engage such questions as: why does the protagonist voyage Why does he or she write or tell stories What shape or plot does the narrator give to the journey What is the nature of "the exotic" and what ethnocentric assumptions and valorizations are implicit in designating an "other" defined against the normalized "self " do such texts emphasize universalism or relativism What is the relation of the new place to "home" The texts may include Homer's Odyssey, Shakespeare's The Tempest, Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Flaubert's Letters from Egypt, Lawrence's Sea and Sardinia, Greene's Journey without Maps, Canetti's Voices of Marrakech, Eco's Travels in Hyperreality, and Barthes' Empire of Signs. Prerequisites: two English courses at the 200 level or above. Conference. Not offered 2009-10.

Credits:

3.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.reed.edu

Phone Number:

(503) 771-1112

Regional Accreditation:

Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities

Calendar System:

Semester

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