BRIAR ROSE by ROBERT COOVER

Looking toward classes in the fall semester, researching literary examples of postmodernism, I ran across a web site with Robert Coover's "Briar Rose"--hosted by Robert Scholes, et al. http://www.brown.edu/Departments/MCM/people/scholes/BriarRose/texts/BRhome.htm. I'm thinking that I'll start my History of Literary Theory and Criticism course with postmodernism, then flash backward to Plato and move forward. Or maybe I'll just do the Merlin thing and live in reverse. Book for the course is David Richter's anthology, The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends, 3rd Edition, published by Bedford/St. Martin's, Boston: 2007. The book was chosen by Dr. Janet Ellerby, who was slated to teach the course but will be interim director of the Women's Resource Center intstead. So enter me, the eternal understudy. I really like the book, but am not sure exactly how Janet had planned to use it with the short stories and poems in her course packet. So I decided to choose my own literary texts. I'm looking for my focus. "Briar Rose" might be at least a place to start. Richter refers to an Emily Dickinson poem in the Introduction, too, that I may go with. And several of the texts refer to Homer, including the excerpts from Plato that open the book, and an excerpt from the Odyssey, maybe the scene described by Auerbach from Book 19, would make an interesting literary text to examine from several angles. All of these texts are available online, and I could link them. Auerbach argues in "Odysseus' Scar" that Homer's flashback to the hunting accident in which the hero received the scar is not done to provide suspense for the present story but to illuminate fully the details of the past story. Robert Coover's postmodern narrative "Briar Rose" gives the reader multiple stories within its story, too. So I can see bringing these two texts together.