This course explores the pervasive role of deception in American literary culture, focusing on hoaxes, forgeries, doubles, impostures, and acts of betrayal. From the playful to the pathological, we will examine how literary texts stage fabrication not merely as plot devices but as fundamental challenges to the boundaries between truth and fiction. Moving across periods, we will consider how American literature engages various practices of fabrication, from forged documents and unreliable narration to elaborate narrative performances that blur fact and fiction. Alongside literary texts, we will examine the role of falsification and stress testing in broader scientific and informational contexts (e.g. false entries or “mountweazels” in reference works, or fault injection in programming). Approaching such phenomena through the lens of theories of lying, fictionality, and epistemology, the course asks: What is truth in fiction? Where is the line between artistic invention from fraud? And why has American literary culture proven so persistently preoccupied with the figure of the deceiver or “con man”?
- Teacher: Michael Boyden