2007-08 BM1 Introduction to the Critical and Scholarly Discussion of Literature, Part 2

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Attention!!: TIME AND ROOM CHANGE! Thurs 18 - 20,
A6 4-418
Katharina Schneider


The second part of our Basismodule focuses on techniques of textual analysis in the context of discussing literature. Please make sure that you are registered on Stud.IP. You will find information relating to the courses on this page:

The texts for our courses will come from a pool offering a wide variety of material from which I will choose texts for the course. You should make sure to print and read the texts announced in class.

The "analytical tools" will be presented by the lectures (on a handout) in each meeting. The additional reading from which these 'tools' are taken is not obligatory, and it can be done either before or after.

Both the texts and the other materials will be made accessible to you electronically (cf. the links below). In addition you will need to purchase Shakespeare's "Merchant of Venice" read in our course in an Arden Edition (ca. 14 EUR at the CvO bookshop).

Course work: You will be asked to hand in three assignments (in week 4, 7 and 10 respectively) and produce a Research Paper Outline (due March 15 2008). The assignments are limited to a max. of 2-3 pages of text, formatted according to the style sheet, and will require you to analyse poetry, drama and fiction respectively. For the Research Paper Outline you will need to find your own topic to work on and document the preliminary work (this includes finding an appropriate title, writing a paragraph that describes your problem and your goal, and presenting a tentative table of contents and a short bibliography).

Tutorials will help you to practise your analysis skills and support you in doing your assignments and Research Paper Outline.

Session 1: A Poem

Texts

Blake, Jerusalem (1804)

Skills and Activities

Group work with presentations:

  1. What is poetic about this poem?
  2. What are the Themes of the poem?
  3. What historical contexts?
  4. What is its cultural significance (then and later/now)?

Seminar discussion: What discourses did you employ? What traditions do they belong to? How does this relate back to the lecture of the Winter Term? Survey of the coming Term.

Session 2: Poetry and Poetics

Analytical Tools

Texts

Skills and Activities

Structural approach to poetry: Communicative situation, themes, metrics and language. Acquire a basic checklist of what to look (first) for in a poem. Recapitulate the basics of metrics and rhyme patterns. Recognise the features of a particular genre and genre conventions: the Sonnet

Session 3: Poetry and Poetics: Speaking about Beautiful/Artful Language

Analytical Tools

Texts

  • George Herbert. "The Deniall" The Temple. Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations. University of Cambridge, T. Buck and R. Daniel, 1633.
  • Emily Dickinson

Skills and Activities

Figurative language, interplay. Spot metaphors, similes, etc. the metric pattern and valorise the points where it is broken. Reinforce basic checklist of previous week. Analyse particular features of poetic language (figures of speech, metrical effects).

Assignments

Assignment 1 given

Session 4: Rhetoric

Analytical Tools

Text

Skills and Activities

A speech from the Shakespeare play of the next four sessions [assignment 1 due]

Session 5: Dramatic Structures, Dramatic Communication

We took a look at the table Katharina presented on the question of Character Conception. It offered the categories

  • static versus dynamic
  • mono- versus multidimensional
  • personification/type/individual
  • open versus closed
  • transpsychological versus psychological

The first analysis (static versus dynamic) focused on a psychological development and the question whether moods of the protagonists change. I questioned that the quest for psychological developments might be the most appropriate perspective and offered three alternative options of characterisation for materials produced before the 1750s. Modern heroes get stories of personal character developments, pre 1750 heroes take steps in different dimensions:

  • Role and reputation are interconnected (you need reputation to be allowed to act a certain role), power to act is closely connnected to both points. Protagonists loosing or gaining roles and reputation tend to enter tragic or comic developments (in plays and novels produced before the 1750s)
  • The struggle between virtue and vices namely those of
    • voluptuousness or immoderate passion for pleasures
    • ambition or immoderate passion for glory and honour
    • avarice or immoderate passion for money and riches
    • temperance, modesty, contentment - as the option to regulate ones passions
can allow abrupt changes of situations. I handed out an early 18th century philosophers view of these options [1]
  • The struggle between a worldly life and devotion is a third option of development (e.g. in Robinson Crusoe)

Whilst we had begun with the notion that Antonio and Shylock were (from a psychological point of view) rather stable characters, we saw them a dynamic characters once we shifted our perspective.

The question of mono- versus multidimensionality lead us to a search for situations in which the protagonists come into conflicts with their consciences. One of the participants mentioned the ring-exchange between Bassanio, his friend and the the feigned lawyers. We read into the court scene to see that both new husbands actually betrayed their wifes (present in the scene) before, confessing that they would sacrifice their lives and the lives of their new wifes to save Antonio's.

The "personification/type/individual" option of character analysis lead us into the question whether the play would not have become equally or more powerful (and less controversial on the race issue), had Shakespeare not focussed on a Jew but just on a greedy merchant.

Shylock the Jew turns the play from one of types and personal character dispositions (like Moliere produced them) into one far bigger conflicts. The Jew begins to stand for a concept of lawfulness superceeded by Christian virtues of mercy and love - the characters begin to "personify" concepts.

The second half of the session was devoted to techniques of character representation: We took a look into the cinema version with Jeremy Irons and Al Pacino: Act II, scene ii - Launcelot and his blind father. The film shortens the scene drastically. We read the soliloquy and the ensuing dialog with its asides. A good deal of the humor did not become immediately apparent. I intervened as a narrator, giving the picture of Launcelot kneeling before is father, the latter searching his face, the former offering his hair...

Why did they not included this scene? Was it too long or a clown's scene unbecoming a serious play? Who is caracterised in the scene? Launcelot, his father - and the Jew. How did the film portray Shylock, was there a tendency to shift our view of Shylock by omitting the Clown's view?

We moved into the handout Analysing Dramatic Communication and made sense of the statements, came to discrepant awareness. I asked the course to consider an alternative version of the play in which we do not learn that the two lawyers in the court scene are actually Portia and Nerissa - a version in which we are as ignorant as the heroes on stage - would it not increase the suspense if we knew less about these "lawyers"? How can knowledge increase suspense? One of the participants moved to the end: it would be boring if we had to learn in the end who these lawyers really were - it would be insipid as a cheap explanation added to the play. I introduced the "deus ex machina" as the sudden arrangement dramatists often employ to get out of the mess they disasters they created.

The handout left the characterisation pattern (image) to be explained: We thought again of Shylock. Where is he characterised. He speaks about himself, others speak about him... one of the participants said that the image was very logical and located the Launcelot-Shylock report we had read in the tree of options. We had a short debate over this - another participant intervened, that this was but one scene, one voice - the voice of Launcelot. I added that this was the charm of the image: it allowed us to locate the instances where we get information and to evaluate them. We had by then reached the end of the session. --Olaf Simons 21:12, 6 December 2007 (CET)


Analytical Tools

Pfister 49 - 57, 86 - 94, 126 - 147 Excerpt from Pfister

Handout:

Texts

One of the three Shakespeare plays

Skills and Activities

Exposition

Session 6: Drama: Characters and Genre Aspects

Analytical Tools

Pfister 183 - 195 Excerpt from Pfister

Text

Skills and Activities

Distinguish modes of characterisation assignment 2 given

Session 7: Drama and Fiction

Analytical Tools

Texts

  • Nathaniel Hawthorne. "Young Goodman Brown [1835]." The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Vol. B. Fifth Edition. Ed. Paul Lauter. Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006. 2258-2267.
  • Coover, Magic Poker

Skills and Activities

An understanding of genres in the context of traditional poetics, and of the transition from poetic genres to literary genres. [assignment 2 due]

Session 8: Film Adaptations

"'The Merchant of Venice'"

Session 9: Fiction 1

Analytical Tools

Rimmon-Kenan 72-86

Excerpt from Rimmon-Kenan

Handout: Narratology

Texts

Skills and Activities

Narration, Focalisation. [assignment 2 returned]

Session 10: Fiction 2

Analytical Tools


Rimmon-Kenan 59-71

Handout: Narratology

Texts

Skills and Activities

Plot and Characters. [assignment 3 given]

Session 11: Film

Assignment 3 given.

Analytical Tools

  • Handout: Film Analysis
  • David Bordwell et al.; Korte, Einführung in die Systematische Filmanalyse (2000)

Texts

Quentin Tarantino, Pulp Fiction (1994)

Skills and Activities

Spectacle, Narratives and Fiction. Film Analysis. [assignment 3 due]

Session 12: Beyond the Canon 1

Analytical Tools

Texts

Skills and Activities

Literary Analysis and non-literary materials, [assignment 3 returned]

Session 13: Beyond the Canon 2

Analytical Tools


Texts

Toni Hagen, Afoot in Roadless Nepal (1960)

Skills and Activities

Literary Analysis and non-literary materials

Session 14: Term Paper Projects

Skills and Activities

Brief Report on 'Work in Progress': Your Term Paper Projects