ENGL 148(F) Life as Fact and Fantasy (W)

"We tell ourselves stories in order to live," writes Joan Didion, suggesting that the urge to create narrative is basic to our understanding of ourselves, more basic, perhaps, than the need to understand our existence completely and accurately. This class will examine the meaning of truth when it is applied to the way we understand our lives. We'll look at the philosophical foundations of the idea that life may be examined objectively and at the ways in which various authors have responded to the impulse to make stories of their lives. Is identity necessarily a mystery? Is "creative nonfiction" a contradiction in terms? Reading will include literature-factual and fictional-by Plato, Hume, Defoe, Chekhov, Tolstoy, Capote, Didion, Frey and others.
Format: discussion/seminar. Requirements: active class participation, and five papers totaling 20 pages.
No prerequisites. Enrollment limit: 19 per section (expected: 19 per section). Preference given to first-year students.

Hour: J. PAUL