“Where can we live but days?” Philip Larkin asks in his poem, Days. 

This course explores how artistic representation works within a single 24-hour limit. Do different genres offer artists a spectrum of opportunities to depict a day in the life? And what do writers have to say about the span of a day?

While focusing on narrative writing, this class asks students to consider ‘a day in the life’ through a variety of genres: novels, films, poetry, and music. We will speculate on time, representation, pacing, genre, and point of view – all necessary tools for creative writers and literary scholars alike. Students will write their own days in a spectrum of forms: poems, short stories, creative non-fiction, and journal entries.

Throughout the summer, we will examine works including Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway (1925), Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland (1865), Ian McEwan’s Saturday (2005), Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (1989), and Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise (1995) – and, of course, the Beatles’ hit song, “A Day in the Life” (1967).

A residential study trip is likely to include a Mrs Dalloway walking tour in London and a trip to the Story Museum in Oxford.

Professor: Kabi Hartman, Professor of English, Franklin & Marshall College. kabi.hartman@fandm.edu