Die Teilnehmerzahl ist auf 25 beschränkt. Bitte melden Sie sich vor Semesterbeginn unter AGNES an. Virginia Woolf, Edith Sitwell and Gertrude Stein share many features: they are modernist writers, they wrote experimental literary texts, and they were keenly interested in the other arts: Woolf, Stein, and Sitwell had close connections with painters and composers – the most famous friendship is that between Gertrude Stein and Pablo Picasso. These writers were also interested in how literary texts could come close to the characteristics of other art forms: How do you turn a poem into music? How can a text approach the characteristics of visual representation? How can a text become a performance? What do literary and painted portraits have in common? Is there anything like ‘literary impressionism’ or ‘Cubist writing’? With such questions on the relation between the arts and characteristics of modernist writing in mind, we will read short prose texts by Woolf (e.g. “The String Quartet”; “Kew Gardens”), experimental poetry by Edith Sitwell (Façade), as well as some of Gertrude Stein’s “Portraits“ and her Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. Please get your own edition of Gertrude Stein’s The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas – ideally the Penguin Modern Classics edition (London 2001 / ISBN 9780141185361) so that we can be on the same page. The shorter texts will be available in a reader and on moodle. Part of the course will be a visit to Museum Berggruen with its great collection of modernist paintings – Picasso and Matisse amongst its protagonists. |
