|
Eudora Welty's Short Fiction:
The Biographical Contexts
Dr. Suzanne Marrs
"Fiction," Eudora Welty learned in the course
of her long career, "is highly personal, but objective. It is something
which only you can write but which is not, necessarily, about you."
During the spring 2006 Leadership Seminar we will investigate the double-edged
nature of this realization. We will look at the way Welty's deepest private
concerns determined her fictional subjects, and we will examine the ways
those concerns were translated and transformed into works that move beyond
the personal to become emblematic or representative.
Each of Eudora Welty's major collections of short stores,
helped her to resolve key issues in her life. Through the study of selected
writings, we will focus on the relationship of the stories to Welty's
personal life and the world around her, her relationships with family
and friends, her reading, and her travels.
We will also emphasize the ways her stories expanded her
experience and continue to expand our own, bringing us into touch with
characters who are black and white, poverty-stricken and affluent, southern
and northern, American and European, tormented and complacent, insecure
and ego-maniacal. We will also discuss the manner in which these stories
deal with the nature of love, with the power of time, with the pain of
isolation, and with the importance of imagination and communication.
This study will be one of the writer's creative process,
of its mysteries and its magnificent results. We will come to experience
the ways that fiction is, to use Eudora Welty's terms, "highly personal,
but objective."
The Course Objectives will be:
To explore the relationship between biography and fiction.
To appreciate the artistry and thematic complexity of Eudora Welty's short
fiction.
To consider ways in which Eudora Welty's life is revealed in her short
stories and to consider ways in which those stories translate her life
into plots that transcend the personal.
Classes will consist of discussion, assigned homework readings, class
exercises, and outside writings.
For a more complete class description, call 601-974-1130.
|
