*English 581: “Show-and-Tell”*

(Imitation and analysis of prose fictional forms and styles.)

This course offers a non-theoretical, specimen-oriented study of
narrative forms and prose styles, ancient to postmodern, with a high
ratio of writing to reading. The design of the assignments will be
"writing in response" to selected readings, both imitatively and
analytically -- emphasis on _both_ -- but not parodically. The readings
will include credos, manifestoes, and opinionated interviews or reviews
by literary artists, whose fiction we will also study. The ultimate
ambitions here are, first, to provide you with a broader vocabulary of
formal choices as fiction writers and so a deeper understanding of
fiction's expressive possibilities; and also to foster the development
of a "bifocal" reading intelligence -- intuitively apt and analytically
sharp, hands-on and heads up -- so that the artist and the critic might
cohabit fruitfully in the same mind.

Prerequisite: MFA student or permission of the instructor: David Bosworth

Enrollment limit: 12.