War Creations: World War II and the Novel

World War II, with its unprecedented atrocities, ideological disputes, and engaged intellectuals, also threw into question the role of the novel and its relationship to society and to history, influencing literature, theory, and literary criticism in the decades that followed. How might we define an "engaged author" or a "political novel"? What are the different approaches of novelists to the war and its ideologies, and how does this differ between countries? How far might the "novel" venture into allegory, memoir, and political propaganda and still remain a novel? How does fiction recreate, revise, and help examine the horrific momentum of fanatical politics and the consequences, and how does it do this differently from journalism and historical writing? Finally, how might the breakdown of linear narratives relate to attempts to tell about the war? The course will address these questions through reading excerpts from theoretical texts in conjunction with works by a range of authors including Albert Camus, Italo Calvino, Heinrich Boll, Gunter Grass, Robert Antelme, Primo Levi, Kurt Vonnegut, Marguerite Duras, Georges Perec, and Joseph Heller. Texts will be discussed in English, but students are encouraged to read the texts in the original.