Comparative investigation of a topic in the theory of literature.

Minor characters are having their moment. In this course, we will read selections from the spate of recent critical texts regarding minor character, asking how minorness is being constituted one hundred years after E.M. Forster’s 1927 Aspects of the Novel, which left us with the enduring division of characters into “round” and “flat.” We will question this simple dyad, as well as a host of critical practices based in the study of modernist fiction, such as the valuation of the technical means by which authors represent consciousness. What alternatives might we have to a language of psychological depth versus flatness and compression? We will begin by reading some of the novels which have been most central to theorists of minor and flat character, such as Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko and Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, and then progress to Cao Xueqin’s magisterial 18th-century Chinese novel, The Story of the Stone, with its cast of hundreds of minor characters. Along the way, we will engage with the theoretical literature on infrastructure, waste, and the new materialism in an effort to find alternatives to the valuation of depth. As we conclude the semester, we will consider what Jeremy Rosen has called “minor character elaborations” –sequels that take minor characters of well-known novels and spin them into protagonists – in order to re-examine the question of minorness.

No prerequisites. Requirements include weekly blog posts, two class presentations, and one final essay.

Repeat Rules

Course is not repeatable for credit.