Description

What opens up in this module:
Fiction that endures does so because its structural decisions are as deliberate as its prose. This module develops the analytical vocabulary to read those decisions — not to reduce a novel to its mechanics, but to understand how the mechanics produce the experience the reader has.

This module works through:
– Narrative architecture: the structural patterns beneath individual stories and how different arrangements of time, event, and perspective shape what a reader understands and feels
– Point of view and voice: how the choice of narrator — and the level of access they are granted — determines what a story can and cannot do
– Thematic structure: how a novel’s recurring images, contrasts, and motifs carry meaning that the plot alone does not

Estimated engagement: +/- 3 hours

What changes afterward:
A permanent shift in how literary fiction is read — producing analysis that engages with what a novel is doing structurally rather than only what it is saying narratively.