Spring 2007

008: 075:001 SELECTED TRANSNATIONAL AUTHORS: CONRAD AND DESCENDANTS
206 EPB, 10.55am-12.10pm
Instructor: Peter Nazareth
Office hours MWF 11.30-12.30, 2.30-4, and by appointment
Office 468 EPB, phone 335-0448, e-mail peter-nazareth@uiowa.edu

The class will study selected fiction by Joseph Conrad, intertwined with selected fiction by writers who respond to Conrad, referencing his texts by parodying, mirroring, reversing, compressing, deconstructing or expanding. The impact of Conrad will be seen in terms of style, aesthetic structure, and content. It will be shown that Conrad was dealing with modern political and economic issues such as colonialism, neo-colonialism and terrorism and that these issues were taken up by the other writers. It will also be shown that Conrad broke up the worldview imposed by the English language, creating openings through which other writers from worlds that had been subjected to control were able to enter.

Students will be required to write two papers, each of nine to ten pages, or one paper of eighteen to twenty pages.

REQUIRED READING LIST:

Conrad:
“The Secret Sharer”
“Heart of Darkness”
Nostromo
The Secret Agent
Under Western Eyes

Descendants:
Tayeb Salih, Season of Migration to the North (Sudan)
Ngugi wa Thiong’o, A Grain of Wheat (Kenya)
Peter Nazareth, The General is Up (Uganda)
Laura Kalpakian, “Dark Continent” (USA)
Walter Abish, Alphabetical Africa (USA)

RECOMMENDED:

Peter Nazareth, “Dark Heart or Trickster?” in The Korean Society of Nineteenth Century Literature in English, Vol. 9-3, 2005
Asako Nakai, The English Book and Its Marginalia: Colonial/Postcolonial Literatures After Heart of Darkness