English 248 —Allegory and Fantasy

     All prose literature can be placed on a spectrum from the mimetic to the allegorical. Contemporary readers are more comfortable with interpreting the mimetic, or realistic, side of the spectrum. Allegory—a mode or genre used by writers from the classical to the postmodern—provokes questions other than realistic ones, by the fraught and dreamlike worlds of its texts.

     This course offers advice and practice in responding to allegorical elements in literature. The dramatized metaphors of allegorical characters, places, objects, and events can be understood in ways that are neither reductive nor simplistic, but flexible and open to transformation. Fantasy literature is often allegorical, challenging the reader not to “escape” reality, but to engage reality with a fuller understanding.

     Of course, we live in a world deeply nuanced with shades of gray. Fictive allegorical worlds extract pixels from that gray (some black, some white, some otherwise) and hold them up for illumination. The defamiliarizing techniques of allegory, fantasy, dreamworld, and myth appeal on levels other than cognitive, immersing the reader in the uncanny before sending her back to this gray world with renewed sight.

     There are four sections to this course.

Section I, Journeys toward Illumination:   Short stories by E. M. Forster and Flannery O’Connor. These two authors, so differently situated by background, nevertheless offer common evocations of green landscapes and ephiphanies.

Section II, Guilt, Sorrow, Despair:   The shadowed worlds of Nathaniel Hawthorne's and Franz Kafka's short stories. These two authors, from different countries and literary periods, each allegorize harrowing moral and existential struggles.

Section III, Questing Fellowships:   Groups of characters who bear allegorical weight in apocalyptic (end-of-the-world) situations. Two short novels, one by Kurt Vonnegut and another by Mariann Regan, explore the “plot lines” of fictions, individuals, groups, and all humanity.

Section IV, Heights, Depths, Worlds Saved and Lost:   The first three sections of the course converge in the allegorical fantasy of J. R. R. Tolkien’s trilogy, Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of the King. Combinations of allegorical landscapes, objects, events, and characters are woven by Tolkien into this trilogy, which is only one piece of his comprehensive mythology.

Course Requirements: Eight reading quizzes, one critical article explanation, three annotated comparison lists, one Tolkien interpretive (not research) paper, regular class attendance and participation. We begin the Tolkien reading quizzes during Sections I and II, since these have comparatively light reading.