ENGL 291: The American Novel Since 1945
Lecture 22 - Edward P. Jones, The Known World. In the first of her two lectures on Edward P. Jones's The Known World, Professor Hungerford begins from the novel's title, asking what counts as knowledge in the novel and why knowledge is central to the story. This leads to related questions: who is a knower, and what can be known? Highlighting several different versions of how knowledge of the past is communicated through storytelling within the novel, she draws distinctions between Jones's model of historical knowledge and that of other writers on the syllabus. Professor Hungerford suggests that Jones revives a nineteenth-century form of the novel when his narrator takes on a God-like omniscience, but unlike the nineteenth-century novel's narrators, Jones's omniscient narrator provides little in the way of God-like consolation. (from oyc.yale.edu)
Lecture 22 - Edward P. Jones, The Known World |
Time | Lecture Chapters |
[00:00:00] | 1. Initial Student Reactions: The Known World in the Wake of Morrison |
[00:06:31] | 2. A Historical Novel: Reactions to Postmodern Historical Theory |
[00:17:09] | 3. Threadlike Narratives and the Grand Tapestry: Modes of Telling Truth |
[00:34:19] | 4. The Question of Knowing: A Syllabus Retrospective |
[00:39:59] | 5. Jones's Anti-modernist Return to an Omniscient Narrator |
References |
Lecture 22 - Edward P. Jones, The Known World Instructor: Professor Amy Hungerford. Transcript [html]. Audio [mp3]. Download Video [mov]. |
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