Course Description

clockwise, from top left: Richard Brautigan, Robert Coover, Kurt Vonnegut and Donald Barthelme


ENGL 202 – 002: Topics in Literature: Early American Postmodern Fiction

We’ll start with a theoretical consideration of postmodernism and its cultural implications, before spending most of the semester examining the work of a quartet of authors who made great strides towards a particularly American postmodernism in the 1960s and 70s: Donald Barthelme, Richard Brautigan, Robert Coover and Kurt Vonnegut. Coursework will include both critical evaluations of the texts considered, as well as creative experiments within forms established by the authors.