ENGL 265-01, The Road Narrative, Spring 2008

Abstract

This course explores the continuing popularity of the “road narrative” in postwar American culture. We’ll begin by marking the fiftieth anniversary of Kerouac’s seminal On the Road. Kerouac’s text helps pose a number of questions for the term: what does “the road” mean for American life? Why do people take to the road? What distinguishes a road narrative from travel stories? To what extent is the physical space of the road, or vehicles on the road, as important as the theme of travel? How have contemporary fiction and film challenged the white male tradition of the road narrative? Perhaps in keeping with the road theme, our readings will be organized around a series of “posts”: the postwar road narrative (On the Road, Lolita), the postmodern road narrative (Going Native, Tropic of Orange), the post-apocalyptic road narrative (The Road) and the post-road road narrative (Into the Wild). We will supplement primary texts with excerpts from Stephen King’s Christine and Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran. Our films interrogate the traditional boundaries of nation, gender and sexual identity associated with the genre, including Thelma and Louise, Crash, Transamerica and In This World.