That prototypical novel for children, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, begins with a scene of reading—sort of. Alice is in flight from her sister’s engagement with a book “without pictures or conversations” when she first sets off down the rabbit hole. Jane Eyre, on the other hand, takes refuge in a book from her oppressive cousins at the beginning of the novel that bears her name—and ends up having it thrown at her head. The subject of this class, then, is the way books figure within books—especially, how reading and literacy figure within novels for children, young adults, and adults. What do books tell us about themselves? Do they teach us how to read? Do they comment on each other? Course texts include Jane Eyre (Brontë), The Eyre Affair (Fforde), Cold Comfort Farm (Gibbons), Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Carroll), UnLunDun (Mieville), The Wee Free Men (Pratchett), and selections from Metafiction (Waugh), Proust and the Squid (Wolf), and other literary and critical texts to be named later. Requirements will include a heavy reading load, informed class discussion, and both brief papers and a sustained research project.
Professor of English
