Saturday, June 25, 2011

2011: The Summer of Mary Galbraith


My summer is devoted to reading literature in the present tense. I have been asked to lecture next year on the stylistic and structural implications of novels being narrated in the present tense, so this summer I’m steeping myself in this style as practiced in English, supplemented with examples translated from German, Russian, and French. I’ll also be getting up to date on the relevant theoretical discussion in narratology and cognitive poetics.

Charles Dickens: Bleak House—1853

Virginia Woolf: Jacob’s Room --1922

William Faulkner: As I Lay Dying -- 1930

Samuel Beckett, Malone Dies --1951 (French), 1956 (English)

John Updike: Rabbit, Run—1960

Margaret Atwood: Surfacing--1972

Thomas Pynchon: Gravity’s Rainbow--1973

J M Coetzee: Waiting for the Barbarians –1980

Ian McEwan: Saturday--2005

Hilary Mantel: Wolf Hall--2009

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