Reality Effects: Truth, Representation and Narrative Form

This course investigates a diversity of texts—which may include literary texts, plays, films, and graphic novels—from the nineteenth century to the present, in order to examine the different “truth claims” that these texts make, and the different ways that they purport to represent reality. Such texts inevitably confront questions of gender, sexuality, race and class, and often seek to address issues of inequality, exploitation and injustice. This course prompts students to examine the relation between reality and its narrative representation by asking questions such as: What are the different techniques for evoking a “reality effect” in the realist novel, naturalist drama, historical fiction, documentary film, autobiography, biofiction or memoir? What are the social and political claims characteristic of narrative modes such as realism, naturalism, biography and autobiography, testimony and memoir? How have writers sought to position the truth claims of these modes among other competing modes and genres of literary, dramatic and film narrative? How have the truth claims of these modes been assessed and judged in the public sphere?