Course Code: ENGL 2300
Academic Year: 2024-2025
What does it mean to betray? To be betrayed? "Betrayal in Contemporary Fiction" examines some answers to these questions as reflected in fiction. From a sleepy afternoon in an English country house to a wild road trip through Ukraine, from Noah's Ark to the Nazi invasion of France the novels we'll be reading will take us to places where we can find out more about the moral, social, psychological, and emotional dimensions of betrayal. But we'll also consider the extent to which fiction itself might constitute a kind of betrayal of truth. To this end, we'll examine a variety of narrative strategies and think about some of the ways in which novelists "betray" us in the interests of their fiction. Literary theory will helps us to frame our findings, think critically, and begin to answer the question: does fictional "betrayal" take us further away from the truth or help us understand reality in entirely new ways?