ENG 255 G SUSPENSE AND SERIAL LITERATURE: SERIAL NARRATIVE FROM VICTORIAN NOVELS TO CONTEMPORARY PODCASTS

Sensation novelist Wilkie Collins once shared his not-so-secret recipe for keeping readers on the hook: Make ‘em laugh, make ‘em cry, make ‘em wait! The immense popularity of serial storytelling seems to bear out Collins’s theory. Serial narratives—works published and consumed in periodical installments over time—dominated the Victorian novel and now thrive again in contemporary television and podcasts. The sensational popularity of the 2014 true-crime podcast Serial demonstrates the extent to which serial narratives retain the power to enthrall readers, viewers, and listeners today. While the media, publication formats, and target audiences may have changed from the Victorian novel to the contemporary podcast, serial literature still deploys suspense and secrecy to keep enormous audiences coming back for more. This course will investigate the possibilities, limitations, and allure of serial narrative across several genres, media, and time periods. In the process, we’ll consider such questions as: How do narratives keep readers on the hook for the next installment? What kinds of plot lend themselves to serial formats? How do the techniques of serial narrative differ from fiction to creative non-fiction and from the novel to the podcast? How are today’s serial media alike and unlike their nineteenth-century predecessors? How have the secrets at the heart of serial literature changed over time—or not? This course is itself an experiment in serial form. As such, it will take advantage of the frequent class meetings of Winter Term to experience serial narrative as original readers did—that is to say, serially. We’ll read only one novel, and we’ll do so by reading small parts for each class. This method will simultaneously keep the reading load manageable and enable us to experience seriality in real time with a community of other readers. In addition to one novel, we will examine seasons of a contemporary television series and a podcast. Likely texts include Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White (1859-60), the TV series Broadchurch (2014), and the podcast Serial (2014).