Literature and the Real World

FAIN: FS-10148-75

University of California, Berkeley (Berkeley, CA 94704-5940)
Ralph W. Rader (Project Director: June 1975 to present)

The seminar will explore the idea that the mind understands a literary work by grasping the immanent intention of the author through a process of tacit cognition. The novel's relationship to the real will be studied in the pseudo-factual novel of Defoe5 the standard novel of objectified fantasy, and the novel of simulated actuality developed by Joyce and others. The Seminar will also consider how the external reference of factual works (by Boswell, Capote, Mailer) enters into our internal experience of them.