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

Analytical Tools

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

Handout: Analysing Dramatic Communication

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