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Re: NABOKOV COURSE (fwd)
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Have to re-post this because the server did not accept attachments. If for
some of you it's a duplicate, my apologies. Contact Brian Walter
directly if you want to receive the materials he attached to his posting.
GD
From: Brian Walter <bdwalter@artsci.wustl.edu>
During the spring semester of 1995, I was fortunate to teach a
sophomore-level course called simply "The Novels of Vladimir Nabokov" for
the English Dept. at Washington University. We covered nine of the usual
novel suspects in the course of the fifteen weeks: King, Queen, Knave, The
Defense, Invitation to a Beheading, The Gift, The Real Life of Sebastian
Knight, Bend Sinister, Lolita, Pnin, and Pale Fire, with a few shorter
selections from Lectures on Literature and Speak, Memory as supplements. I
defended my dissertation a month or so after the course's completion, and
needless to say, the opportunity to review a substantial chunk of the
corpus for teaching purposes proved enormously beneficial during the last
few months of composition and refinement.
In lieu of a link to a (non-existent) web-page with a syllabus of (at best)
minimal relevance (the reading schedule followed a pretty straightforward
chronological track), I have included attachments below of two sets of
suggested paper topics, the first for standard 6-8 page essays, the second
for briefer final exam essays. Before today, I hadn't looked at these
questions since I made them up four years ago, and (though the stakes here
are *considerably* lower than those involved in the English-ing of KQKn or
Camera Obscura, for example) the temptation to free the kernels from the
chaff was quite strong. Naturally enough, I gave in to it (in a couple of
places).
BW
Brian Walter
6016 Washington Blvd.
St. Louis, MO 63112-1410
bdwalter@artsci.wustl.edu
some of you it's a duplicate, my apologies. Contact Brian Walter
directly if you want to receive the materials he attached to his posting.
GD
From: Brian Walter <bdwalter@artsci.wustl.edu>
During the spring semester of 1995, I was fortunate to teach a
sophomore-level course called simply "The Novels of Vladimir Nabokov" for
the English Dept. at Washington University. We covered nine of the usual
novel suspects in the course of the fifteen weeks: King, Queen, Knave, The
Defense, Invitation to a Beheading, The Gift, The Real Life of Sebastian
Knight, Bend Sinister, Lolita, Pnin, and Pale Fire, with a few shorter
selections from Lectures on Literature and Speak, Memory as supplements. I
defended my dissertation a month or so after the course's completion, and
needless to say, the opportunity to review a substantial chunk of the
corpus for teaching purposes proved enormously beneficial during the last
few months of composition and refinement.
In lieu of a link to a (non-existent) web-page with a syllabus of (at best)
minimal relevance (the reading schedule followed a pretty straightforward
chronological track), I have included attachments below of two sets of
suggested paper topics, the first for standard 6-8 page essays, the second
for briefer final exam essays. Before today, I hadn't looked at these
questions since I made them up four years ago, and (though the stakes here
are *considerably* lower than those involved in the English-ing of KQKn or
Camera Obscura, for example) the temptation to free the kernels from the
chaff was quite strong. Naturally enough, I gave in to it (in a couple of
places).
BW
Brian Walter
6016 Washington Blvd.
St. Louis, MO 63112-1410
bdwalter@artsci.wustl.edu