An introduction to the varieties of prose narrative: from fairy tales to short stories and novels. What makes a story different from a simple piece of information? What happens to stories and storytelling when we move from an anonymous oral tradition to written literature? How is the art of fiction related to its developing historical context? We will examine a spectrum of fictional modes, from the documentary realist to the expressionist and allegorical. Authors to be studied include Austen, Gogol, Poe, Dickens, Chekhov, Joyce, Woolf, and Flannery O’Connor.
