Difference between revisions of "2007-08 MM Romans à Clef -- Fictions with a Key"

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(15 - 16.30 p.m.: The Ideology of Lothair. Ideas of Englishness and Narrative Peculiarities.)
('''02.02.2008, 9.30, A06 0-009''')
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* 11 - 12. 30 : ''Lothair'' -- Sorting out the key. Political and religious constellations in Britain and Europe around 1870. Satirical portraits of contemporaries.
 
* 11 - 12. 30 : ''Lothair'' -- Sorting out the key. Political and religious constellations in Britain and Europe around 1870. Satirical portraits of contemporaries.
 
* 13.30 - 15 : Political situations, and religious and romantic complications in ''Lothair''.
 
* 13.30 - 15 : Political situations, and religious and romantic complications in ''Lothair''.
 +
* 16.45 - 17.45 p.m.: Course Evaluation. – Final Discussion. Comparative perspectives from the early eighteenth to the late twentieth century
 +
 
==15 - 16.30 p.m.: The Ideology of Lothair. Ideas of Englishness and Narrative Peculiarities.==
 
==15 - 16.30 p.m.: The Ideology of Lothair. Ideas of Englishness and Narrative Peculiarities.==
  

Revision as of 12:37, 31 January 2008

  • Time: Thursdays 10-12 am
  • NOTE: Due to pressures on students who are preparing their Staatsexamen, this course has been rescheduled. The three meetings originally scheduled for for December 2007 will be cancelled. Instead, we will have a Blockseminar on Saturday, February 2nd, 2008, with four seminar sessions in room A6 0-009. Details in the revised schedule below.


Course Description

In this seminar we will deal with texts that display a special variety of the relationship between 'fiction' and 'truth'. Instead of promising a 'higher truth' as a reward for the pains of interpreting stories that are not literally true, these stories promise a literal truth that is too dangerous or too scandalous to be stated directly and which will be disclosed to those who recognise actual people behind the fictional names. Our examples will range across three centuries and will include, in that order: Primary Colors, published anonymously in 1996 and made into a film in 1998 with John Travolta and Emma Thompson as the Stantons (i.e. Clintons); Delarivier Manley’s Secret Memoirs now knows as The New Atalantis (1709), a satirical collection of scandalous stories mainly about Whig politicians and aristocrats (as well as other people Manley did not like); and finally Benjamin Disraeli’s Lothair (1870), written between the author’s two terms as prime minister, and ‘exposing’ the plots and stratagems of Roman Catholics in English high society.
We will use these texts in order to establish the main features of the ‘genre’ and of its historical development, we will get to know the historical backgrounds and cultural contexts for such fictions with a key, and we will also keep in contrastive focus the relationship of such texts to the public interest in fictions of a more conventional type.

  • Requirements for credits as a Master Module “English Literatures”:
  1. Regular attendance and active participation (you may miss up to two meetings, whatever the reasons).
  2. An oral contribution in the form of an ‘invitation to discussion’ that will help you decide on a topic for your subsequent term paper (you formulate research questions or propositions concerning a particular text and topic, and invite the seminar to discuss them).
  3. A term paper (generally dealing with one or several of the issues raised in your oral contribution; length ca. 20 pages; deadline March 1, 2008).
  • Requirements for candidates for the Staatsexamenklausur:
Write a short summary of one of the seminar meetings.
  • Texts:
Copies of Primary Colors have been ordered and are now available at the university bookshop. The New Atalantis is not in print. A master copy of the two volumes of the original 1709 edition has been placed in a folder at Wersig. Copies of Lothair are on order, too. If these prove difficult to procure, a mastercopy of the Oxford Clarendon Press edition (1975) will be made available at Wersig. More info in the second half of September.


25.10.2007

Introduction. Technicalities.

01.11.2007

John Travolta and Emma Thompson as Bill and Hilary Clinton? Primary Colors: The Movie

08.11.2007

1991. The Candidacy: The Clintons first primary election campaign in history, in fiction, in film

Suggested key for "Primary Colors"

15.11.2007

Narration and judgment: the Stantons and their campaign staff. (Characters, Narrative techniques)

22.11.2007

[postponed.]

29.11.2007

1996, 1998. Scandals: Public debates and scandals about Bill Clinton, debates and scandals about the publication and the authorship of Primary Colors.


The Media and Politics

Session Summary

06.12.2007

[postponed]

13.12.2007

[postponed]

20.12.2007

[postponed]

10.01.2008

[postponed due to illness]

17.01.2008

Resuming the issue: the roman a clef in generic and historical perspective.

  • Please read the texts by Kanzog und Rösch in preparation.


24.01.2008

New Atalantis: The Scandals of the Mighty: English and European Politics in the New Atalantis, and the Scandals around its publication.

As a preparation for our presentation, we would like you to read those text excerpts of "The New Atalantis" that we uploaded on stud.ip. Compare with the given key: which historical persons lie underneath the surface of these text excerpts?

31.01.2008

New Atalantis: Sorting out the key: Public and private scandals, gossip, and Manleys’s own story.


02.02.2008, 9.30, A06 0-009

  • 9.30 - 11 a.m.: New Atalantis: Narrative techniques: The frame narrative, its tradition and its relation to the individual stories.
  • 11 - 12. 30 : Lothair -- Sorting out the key. Political and religious constellations in Britain and Europe around 1870. Satirical portraits of contemporaries.
  • 13.30 - 15 : Political situations, and religious and romantic complications in Lothair.
  • 16.45 - 17.45 p.m.: Course Evaluation. – Final Discussion. Comparative perspectives from the early eighteenth to the late twentieth century

15 - 16.30 p.m.: The Ideology of Lothair. Ideas of Englishness and Narrative Peculiarities.

1. Conceptions of the term Ideology – Definitions and Approaches What is ideology? Which of the following definitions appear useful to you in the context of literary studies?

a) the process of production of meanings, signs and value in social life; b) a body of ideas characteristic of a particular social group or class; c) ideas which help to legitimate a dominant political power; d) false ideas which help to legitimate a dominant political power; e) systematically distorted communication; f) that which offers a position for a subject; g) forms of thought motivated by social interests; h) identity thinking; i) socially necessary illusion; j) the conjuncture of discourse and power; k) the medium in which conscious social actors make sense of their world; l) action-oriented sets of beliefs; m) the confusion of linguistic and phenomenal reality; n) semiotic closure; o) the indispensable medium in which individuals live out their relation to a social structure; p) the process whereby said life is converted to a natural reality.

(Eagleton, Terry. Ideology: An Introduction (London: Verso, 1991), pp. 1-2.)


2. How can ideologies be represented/incorporated in a literary text ?


3. What kind of ideologies can be found in `Lothair` ?

3.1. Ideologies of the characters

3.1.1 Ideologies of the characters which can be deduced from the implicit characterization by the narrator

3.1.2. Ideologies of the characters which can be deduced from explicit utterances by the characters themselves

-Theodora (ch. XXV, XXXI, XLIX) -Cardinal Grandison (Lady St. Jerome) (ch. IX, XVII) -Mr. Phoebus (ch. XXIX, XXX)


3.2. Ideologies of the narrator (and the author) and their manifestation in narrative peculiarities

3.3. What is the narrator’s conception of Englishness? (ch. LXX)

3.4. What is the relation between Englishness and religion / Englishness and “race”?

(ch. XLV:Lady Corisande / Theodora, ch. LXX: Lord St. Jerome, ch. LXXVII: Paraclete)


-also useful:

-Richard G. Weeks (1989): `Disraeli as a Political Egotist`, p. 387

`Disraeli`s novels were like masks. Whatever the story line, whatever the configuration of main characters, the ambitious Disraeli , hungry for recognition, can be found somewhere inside. His psychology, his values, his objectives all can be discovered with greater or lesser facility in his novels.The writings of Disraeli the novelist serve as an instrument to penetrate the façade of Disraeli the politician.`

-Peculiar: the character Hugo Bohun (appears on p. 70 for the 1st time, without being introduced) There has been a charater in Disraeli`s novel Hartlebury (1834, written by Disraeli together with his sister Sarah) named `Aubrey Bohun`, whom Weeks identifies as Disraeli himself (Week, p. 391-393)

-Disraeli`s involvement with the Young England movement (Weeks pp. 394-395)

-Interesting with regard to Disraeli`s concept of `inferior and superior races´ and the `desirability of racial purity` is the article `Disraeli`s conception of Divine Order` by Clyde J. Lewis (from 1962,)is from and his conviction that `racial quality or lack of quality` is dictated by God. (p. 152-153)

07.02.2008

Feedback on Course Evaluation. – Discussion of Term Paper Projects and hints on preparing for the Examensklausur.



Reading Materials

Romans à Clef - Select Bibliography