This seminar considers global fiction in English through the lens of the Nobel Prize in Literature. Surveying a selection of the fiction writers in English who have won the prize, the course traces the development of a fascinating, sometimes delightfully bizarre canon of prose-narrative world literature in English. This development tells us as much about the changing situation of the English-language novel as it does about individual writers. Discussion focuses on individual novels and stories, but also on the paraphernalia of the prize, including Nobel lectures, Swedish royalty photo ops, and outraged media commentary. Major themes: writing from, against, and after empire; the idea of the “universal”; realist and experimental forms; popularity and difficulty; and the politics of the world stage.
Detailed syllabus: syllabus.pdf.
This page last updated: April 30, 2024.
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January 17. Introduction.
- Nobel’s will and the list of laureates.
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January 22. Rudyard Kipling (1907).
- Kipling, “The Story of Muhammad Din.”
- Kipling, “The Man Who Would Be King.”
- af Wirsén, “Award Ceremony Speech.”
- Pionke, “The Epistemological Problem of British India.”
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Wednesday, January 24. Prize theory.
- Ghosh, “The March of the Novel Through History.”
- Casanova, World Republic of Letters, 146–57.
- English, Economy of Prestige, 1–14, 50–62, 187–96, 297–312.
- Leypoldt, “Civil Sacred.”
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Monday, January 29. William Faulkner (1949).
- Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury, pt. 1 (“April Seventh, 1928”).
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Wednesday, January 31. Faulkner, cont.
- Faulkner, Sound, pts. 1–2.
- Sartre, “On The Sound and the Fury.”
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Monday, February 5. Faulkner, cont.
- Faulkner, Sound, complete.
- Faulkner, “Banquet Speech.”
- Hellström, “Award Ceremony Speech.”
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Wednesday, February 7. Faulkner, concluded.
- Faulkner, Sound, continued, including the appendix.
- Faulkner, “An Introduction.”
- Saldívar, “Faulkner and the World Culture of the Global South.”
- Wall, “Sound and Fury.”
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Monday, February 12. Nadine Gordimer (1991).
- Gordimer, July’s People, 1–85.
- Gordimer, “Writing and Being.
- Allén, “Award Ceremony Speech.”
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Wednesday, February 14. Gordimer, cont.
- Gordimer, July’s People, 1–122.
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Monday, February 19. Gordimer, cont.
- Gordimer, July’s People, complete.
- Clingman, The Novels of Nadine Gordimer, 1–6, 193–204.
- Powell, “Equality or Unity?,” 225–30, 234–39.
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Wednesday, February 21. Gordimer, concluded.
- Gordimer, July’s People, continued.
- Gordimer, “Six Feet of the Country.”
- Gordimer, “Loot.”
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Monday, February 26. Toni Morrison (1993).
- Morrison, “Recitatif.” Morrison said she hated writing short stories.
- Gurnah, “1993, Stockholm.”
- Morrison, “Nobel Lecture.”
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Wednesday, February 28. V.S. Naipaul (2001).
- Naipaul, “One Out of Many” (slightly shortened from In a Free State).
- Naipaul, “Two Worlds.”
- Casanova, World Republic, 205–212.
- Thieme, “Naipaul’s Nobel.”
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Monday, March 4. J.M. Coetzee (2003).
- Coetzee, “The Novel in Africa” (Coetzee reading in 1998).
- Coetzee, “He and His Man.”
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Wednesday, March 6. Doris Lessing (2007).
- Lessing, “To Room Nineteen.”
- Lessing, “On Not Winning the Nobel Prize.”
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(Thursday, March 7.)
- Short paper due.
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(Saturday, March 9. Spring recess begins.)
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Monday, March 18. Alice Munro (2013).
- Munro, Dear Life, through “Corrie.”
- Munro, “Alice Munro: In Her Own Words.”
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Wednesday, March 20. Munro, cont.
- Munro, Dear Life, complete.
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Monday, March 25. Kazuo Ishiguro (2017).
- Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day, 3–110.
- Teodorczuk, “Why Jeff Bezos Was Ecstatic over the Nobel Prize in Literature Announcement.”
- Brouillette, “Tragedy Mistaken for Management Theory.”
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Wednesday, March 27. Ishiguro, cont.
- Ishiguro, Remains, 3–141.
- Ishiguro, “My Twentieth-Century Evening, and Other Small Breakthroughs.
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Monday, April 1. Ishiguro, cont.
- Ishiguro, Remains, complete.
- Walkowitz, Born Translated, chap. 2.
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Wednesday, April 3. Ishiguro, concluded, and on film.
- Ishiguro, Remains.
- Ivory, dir., The Remains of the Day.
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(Friday, April 5.)
- Paper proposals due.
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Monday, April 8. Abdulrazak Gurnah (2021).
- Gurnah, Paradise, 1–92.
- Gurnah, “Writing and Place.”
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Wednesday, April 10.
- Gurnah, Paradise, 1–128.
- Gurnah, “Writing.”
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Monday, April 15.
- Gurnah, Paradise, complete.
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Wednesday, April 17.
- Gurnah, Paradise.
- Falk, “‘That Little Space.’”
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Monday, April 22.
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Wednesday, April 24.
- Presentations, continued.
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Monday, April 29. A glimpse out of English.
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nobelprize.org materials on Annie Ernaux (2022 laureate):
- “Returns.”
- “Prose” (two brief excerpts from her works).
- “Nobel Lecture.”
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nobelprize.org materials on Jon Fosse (2023 laureate):
- “Prose” (a brief excerpt from his work).
- “A Silent Language” (Nobel lecture).
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(Tuesday, May 7.)
- Final paper due.