Kommentar |
In this course, we shall be exploring a broad range of literary and poetological writings (mainly from the field of English Literature) pertinent to the manifold relations of literature and emotions, or affect. With a view back to antiquity, our choice of key texts and genres will be stretching from the Early Modern Period from Shakespeare (A Midsummernight’s Dream), 18th century sentimental fiction (Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa) and aesthetics, the literature of terror, the early Romantics’ insistence on “powerful feelings” and “emotion recollected in tranquillity”, Victorian love and melodrama, modernist T. S. Eliot’s notion of the “objective correlative”, to postcolonial refigurations of emotions and affect in literature (J M Coetzee’s Disgrace).
The full range of reading will be decided upon in dialogue with seminar participants. Shorter primary texts will be made available on moodle. You certainly need to obtain your own copy of our core texts, Richardson’s Clarissa (abridged version: Riverside edition) and Coetzee’s Disgrace (Vintage).
Lektürekurs:
This Lektürekurs attending the seminar offers scope for the in-depth discussion of modern theoretical approaches to emotions and affect in relation to literature, e.g. Houen’s Introduction to Affect and Literature (2020) and (extracts from) Suzanne Keen’s seminal study Empathy and the Novel. Texts will be made available via moodle. |