This is a course in reading, thinking about, and enjoying literature, with a focus on the relation between literature and autobiography. We will read a variety of novels and poems that use the authors’ own lives as material, thinking about how and why literature can succeed or fail in making the details of these authors’ experiences interesting and relevant to readers. Along the way, we will consider issues such as the possibility or impossibility of telling the truth about an experience; the expectations readers feel when a story is said to be “true” and whether it matters if a personal story is strictly accurate; the responsibility toward others when telling a story that is also theirs; masks, personas, alter-egos and the illusion of a “natural” or spontaneous voice; and the way authors attempt to use their own stories to embody narratives of larger national, racial, and cultural groups. Through this exploration, we will think more generally about how literature can challenge and complicate our idea of what it means to be a “self.”

As a “W” course, English 200 will require 15 pages of out-of-class writing,
with revision.

Required books:

Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar, 0061148512
Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums, 0143039601
Robert Lowell, Life Studies, 0374530963
Lyn Hejinian, My Life, 1931243336
Rita Dove, Thomas and Beulah, 0887480217

Course reader