Course : Fiction and Power in World Literature

A central line of inquiry lies at the conceptual heart of this module: “Does fiction possess power?” An exploration of this question will provide the framework for examining the multifaceted relationship between fiction and power in a twofold manner. On the one hand, the module gives the students the opportunity to study politically engaged texts produced under, or in response to, the totalitarian regimes which held sway in the twentieth century and whose legacies continue to inform the present. The selected works explore ways of resisting, challenging, and subverting authoritarian power, from Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, and communist China to the dictatorships of Latin America, the Iranian Revolution, and conflicts in the Middle East. By exploring the complex entanglements of individual agency and responsibility, collective identity, and state power, these narratives bear witness to violence and oppression, preserve cultural and historical memory, and articulate forms of political critique in what, in 1939, Bertolt Brecht called “dark times.” On the other hand, the module moves beyond specific historical political phenomena to examine less obvious negotiations of fiction and power, especially with respect to the various forms of power to which these texts are subject, in which they participate, and on which they reflect metafictionally.

Image: "The Power of Books" (2005) by Mladen Penev

https://mladenpenev.net/concepts