St.Xaviers College- Aluva

The course includes a reading of some of the major theoretical interpretations of the narrative, alongside a thorough reading of some of the most significant and path breaking works of creative literature. Narrative fiction had its origins in the folk story telling tradition, even as in the present form the novel in all its varied aspects to this day remains the most popular and widely read literary form, thanks perhaps to the use of the medium of prose, the medium of everyday conversation. This apparently simplistic explanation need not deter us from taking note of the more complex and ideological issues relating to form and the political import of the extraordinary flexibility the novel shows at the thematic level. In other words the course should teach the student why Lennard Davis described novel as a compulsory addiction. The course offers a sampling of short fiction; the folk story-telling tradition; and Asian, African, Latin American, European, British, and American fiction. One module comprises exclusively of fiction authored by women writers