ENGL 115(F) The Space of Literature+
The critic Maurice Blanchot has argued that writing takes place in an "essential solitude"-a space retracted from the world of others and from "the complacent isolation of individualism." In "the space opened by the movement of writing," writers and readers discover an "infinite murmur opened near us, underneath our common utterances, which seems an eternal spring." In this course, we will test Blanchot's suggestions against our own experiences of writing and reading, our own accounts of what takes place (quite literally) in literature. We will be reading a historically and thematically arranged series of poems, stories, and novels by U. S. writers (Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Walt Whitman, William Carlos Williams, Elizabeth Bishop, Toni Morrison, and Sandra Cisneros, among others) supplemented by criticism that will help to contextualize some of the crucial questions that will emerge from our study. Some of these questions are: What is the relationship between Blanchot's definition of the space of literature and the traditional definition of that space as the preserve of elites and the reservoir of timeless values? What does the space of literature as Blanchot has defined it offer to those categories of people who have been excluded from the space of literature as it has traditionally been defined (i.e., people of color and white women)? How might the space of literature as Blanchot has defined it touch and transform the commonplace spaces of public and private life? Requirements: pre-class email responses to readings and four short papers. No prerequisites. Enrollment limited to 19. Two sections.