War and Literature
Anniken Greve & Rune Henriksen

Specialisation course MPCT 305 spring 2003.

Size: Ca 5 credits (may be expanded to 10 credits)

Period: March/ April 2003.

Course responsible: Associate Professor Anniken Greve, dept of comparative literature

Teaching mainly by: Rune Henriksen, MSc in International Relations/ MA student in Comparative Literature

Time: March or April 2003.

Intellectual Purpose

The intellectual purpose of the spring course in ‘War and Literature’ 2003, is to illustrate the possibilities of literary fiction, particularly postmodern literary fiction, in expanding, critisizing and transcending traditional modern novels of war and peace, and the kind of intellectual approaches that accompanied these. This is done simultaneously on the thematic level(war), the methodological/intellectual level (paradox and irony) and the textual level (experimental techniques). To some extent philosophy and social theory will stimulate thought on the relationship between literary devices and the experience and nature of war in society at large.


Theme and Content

The main thrust and relevance of the course – like the earlier one on Conrad – will be methodological and epistemological issues. Literary fiction brings a uniquely intimate and in-depht understanding of what life is like for other people. Supported here by a focus on a perspectivist social theory method, literary fiction is a powerful means of entering the lifeworld of other people and thus to understand their motivations, thoughts and actions. The thematic parts should thus be seen as illustrations of a method /worldview that is both political/normative in it’s scope and intellectually perspectivist in outlook. This particular intellectual approach can be used to study any theme, and by going a little more in depth on the ‘literary-ness’ of fictional texts – it is an object of the course to increase the understanding of fictional literary techniques.


The course will thematically revolve around the postmodern novel and its description and mainly critique of war as phenomenon and discourse. The postmodern novel’s main features are tantamount to an implicit critique of the understanding and discourse on war found in modern politics and literary fiction. The modern (here; pre-1945) understanding of war in Western society is strongly influenced by Nietzsche’s idea of the ‘will to power’. This idea is expressed in Norman Mailer’s WW2 novel The Naked and the Dead. Apart from this, Mailer’s novel marks a transition from modern to postmodern war novels and thus is a baseline as a late modern war novel with features of the later postmodern critique of the same novels.

By using Nietzsche and Mailer as a modernist basis, we will move on to explore the characteristics of the postmodern condition in general (Zygmunt Baumann and Nietzsche’s perspectivism) and particularly postmodern literary strategies and works that implicitly and explicitly criticize the modern(ist) conception of war. Following Mailer are various postmodern novel’s attempts at critique of the will to power through absurdity (Vonnegut) and irony (Heller). Underlining the postmodern novels is also a methodological commitment to perspectivism which artistically expresses some of the features of postmodern society. Perspectivism is thoroughgoing in Robbe Grillet and Pynchon.

Throughout the course the various novels will draw an impressionistic image of the transition from all-embracing grand narratives as ideational projects expressed in war, to postmodern fragmentary and ironic critiques of such all-embracing narratives. The impressionistic image will be drawn from relatively detailed literary analysis of the novels on the reading-list, thus underlining perspectivism as theme and method.


Reading List

The modern war novel and modernism
Ernest Hemingway A Farewell to Arms [300 p]
Erich M. Remarque All Quiet on the Western Front [224 p]

The postmodern novel and war
Norman Mailer The Naked and the Dead [720 p] (will to power)
Kurt Vonnegut Slaughterhouse five [210 p](critique 1; absurd)
Joseph Heller Catch 22 [600p](critique 2; ironic)
Gunnar Kopperud Time of Light [256 p]
Michael Herr Dispatches [260 p]
Tim O’Brien The things they Carried [246 p](perspectivism)
Alain Robbe-Grillet In the Labyrinth [134 p](perspectivism)
Thomas Pynchon Gravity’s Rainbow [760 p](perspectivism)

Philosophy and Social Theory
Nietzsche
Baumann

Literary Criticism/ International Relations

(background)
(coming up)


Lectures/Seminars

1. Introduction
   
2. The modern novel and war; Hemingway, and Remarque. Realism in literature.
   
   
3. Nietzsche and Perspectivism
   
4. Nietzsche and The will to power
   
   
5. Modernity and the postmodern turn. Zygmunt Baumann
   
6. Modernity and the postmodern turn. Zygmunt Baumann
   
   
7. Mailer, The Naked and the Dead (postmodern transition)
   
8. Mailer, The Naked and the Dead
   
   
9. The postmodern novel
   
10. The postmodern novel
    
    
11. The postmodern war novel and perspectivism; O’Brien and Grillet
    
12. The postmodern war novel and perspectivism; Kopperud
    
    
13. The postmodern war novel and perspectivism; Pynchon
    
14. The postmodern war novel and perspectivism; Pynchon
    
    
15. Critique of the Will to Power; Vonnegut and absurdity
    
16. Critique of the Will to Power; Vonnegut and absurdity
    
    
17. Critique…; Heller and irony
    
18. Critique…; Heller and irony
    
    
19. Postmodernity and Vietnam; Herr
    
20. Postmodernity and Vietnam; Herr