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Writing the Fragment
| Semester and Year | FA 2012 |
| Course Number | WRTNG-UG1329 |
| Section | 001 |
| Instructor | Victoria Blythe |
| Days | Tue,Thu |
| Time | 4:55 PM - 6:10 PM |
| Units | 4.0 |
| Level | U |
| Foundation Requirement |
Description
This writing seminar will explore the fragment as a literary genre and as a modality for literary production. Our engagement with the fragment will focus on interruption as a force for generating writing, a dynamic that leaves in its wake literary debris to be collected and recouped. Revisiting our own literary scenes of destruction we will develop a writing technique based on bricolage. Using the writing workshop as a literary archeological dig we will learn to recognize our usable fragments, to reconfigure and recontextualize them into revitalized works. (Students will bring fragments from their own work to the project.) We will look at some famous literary fragments such as the classic “Anaximander Fragment” and the remains of Sappho’s odes on love. Shelley’s “Ozymandias,” Eliot’s “Wasteland,” Rilke’s “Archaic Torso of Apollo,” and selections from Benjamin’s monumental bricolage-work will figure in our itinerary among the ruins. Theoretical writings may include Said's “Beginnings” and Blanchot's “Writing the Disaster.” Students will revisit and redeploy their own literary fragments and will also work within the genre of the “intentional fragment.”
Syllabus
Course Type
Advanced Writing Courses (WRTNG-UG)
