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This course, offered both for students at Freie Universität and Humboldt-Universität, focuses on poetological texts, that is, texts that discuss the nature, the function, and the rhetoric of poetical texts. We are particularly interested in the function of these texts, in strategies of cultural authorization and political representation, and the role literature plays within these processes. At the beginning of the semester, we will first consider late-medieval texts (prologues, epilogues, accessus ad auctores) which reflect upon the art of poetry. Subsequently, we shall discuss humanist rhetorical treatises (e.g. Roger Ascham's The Scholemaster), with a view also at the role of rhetorical and poetical skills in humanist self-fashioning and the conceptualisation of authorship with its economic and political implications. Finally, we will look at the first English poetics 'proper' in the context of the controversies concerning the problematic status of literature within an aristocratic coterie culture. Among others, we will read Sir Philip Sidney's Defense of Poesy and excerpts from George Puttenham's The Arte of English Poesie. A detailed reading list will be made available at the beginning of March. Interested students should contact us by email at <andre.otto@fu-berlin.de> and <wolfram.keller@staff.hu-berlin.de>. |
