Course Outline

Writing Intensive/Evening

ENGLISH 101W Evening
—INTRODUCTION TO FICTION—
Instructor: Dr. Stephen Ogden

FALL 2008

In this revised course, we will read and reflect over with a scholarly eye a series of British and Canadian novels that span more than a century, from the turn of the 20th to today. We will use Plato's definition of literary art as that which instructs by delighting as our guiding principle. Each of the novels that we will read afford a different type of delight that allows us to see how fiction has evolved its form to stay vital in the ever-changing cultural climate. We will look at a paramount example of the graphic novel, for example; we will study Vancouver writer Douglas Coupland's experimental melding of digital and hard-copy forms in his popular jPod; and we will study the relationship between literature and film, using Atonement as an illustrative case. But most delightfully for those of us who are lovers of fiction, the adapations that we see in fiction has not decreased either the enjoyment of or benefit to be gained from the reading of a good novel. Because this is a writing intensive course, revision will be part of the writing assignments. We will study the works in the order listed here.

REQUIRED TEXTS
Conrad, Joseph Heart of Darkness
Woolf, Virginia Mrs. Dalloway

McEwan, Ian Atonement

Moore, Alan Watchmen

Coupland, Douglas jPod

COURSE REQUIREMENTS

10% Productive Participation

15% Draft of first essay, 1000 words
20% Revised first essay
25% Class Wikipedia Project

30% Final Essay 2500 words