This course focuses on the nature and function of narrative using a wide range of texts from different traditions and genres. We will analyze the ways in which each work of fiction makes use of narrative in order to communicate its thematic concerns, and we will accompany several of the readings with pertinent theoretical texts. The works of fiction (to be read in either one or both semesters) will include stories from Antiquity, a picaresque novel from the sixteenth century, short stories by Cervantes, and selections representing the Enlightenment, Realism, Modernism, and contemporary literature (examples include Voltaire, Jane Austen, Gogol, Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Flaubert, Kafka, and Kundera). We will also read a selection of theoretical and critical texts focusing primarily, but not exclusively, upon literary narrative. These will be chosen (in one or both semesters) from the works of Plato, Aristotle Ortega, Freud, Chatman, Lotman, Wellek, Iser, Genette, Todorov, Culler, Foucault, Barthes, and Felman. All readings in English. Principal requirements: active class participation, two short papers, and a final paper of l0-15 pages.