Literature 21L.012: Forms of Western Narrative (MIT)

This course is about the power of books. From the Sumerian clay tablets of more than four millenia ago through to the spectacular emergence of the electronic text, the written word -- in all its forms -- has captivated the human mind, embodied our insights into the world around us, and made enduring our most profound artistic creations and scientific discoveries. This semester we journey into the history of the book by means of some of its most resonant artifacts, past and present: the Epic of Gilgamesh, Cervantes' Don Quixote, stories by Franz Kafka and Jorge Luis Borges, and contemporary novels by Italo Calvino, Salman Rushdie, and David Mitchell. Students will have the opportunity to present on their readings and to analyze course texts in both written and oral forms, including producing a final podcast -- a narrative of your own making -- to be presented at the end of the semester and posted to the course website.