Di 10-12.00
Seminar:
A
Poet of Pleasure: Ronert Herrick
Robert Herrick was a remarkable and very
enjoyable seventeenth-century author whose rediscovery has long been overdue.
He was born into a wealthy family of goldsmiths, and he became a clergyman.
This is the moment when you might think: a clergyman, so his poetry is probably
boring. Well, the opposite is true. He very much enjoyed life and had a
somewhat eccentric sense of humour, and therefore he did not write like a
clergyman at all.
The English revolution had immediate
consequences for him. It brought the end of the monarchy, and as Herrick was a
supporter of the king, he lost his job in 1647. The poems he wrote in these
difficult times are particularly interesting: What do you do as a poet when you
do not agree with the new, revolutionary political system that has just taken
your job and livelihood away?
Under the new regime, everybody had
to be extremely well-behaved. The Puritan revolutionaries hated any form of
hedonism. Herrick decided to irritate and annoy them by writing poems that openly
celebrated many forms of enjoyment. These included culinary and erotic
pleasures. The quality of his poetry is extraordinary; he knew how to play not
only with ideas but also with sounds and rhythms.
Depending
on the further development of the pandemic, this seminar may or may not be
taught face to face on campus. Our worst-case scenario is that we will have to
continue in online mode. This is not ideal, but the last three semesters have
shown that it is doable. In any case teaching will be in real time, so do not
double-book this time slot.
Please join the seminar’s Moodle
Room (A poet of pleasure: James Herrick,
password: Poet_of_pleasure_WS_21-22 – but you already know this because you are
here). A reader will be made
available for free via the Moodle room. Further information will be sent to you
by e-mail. Please make sure to use and
check your official university e-mail addresses at all times. Do not use any
other addresses, and do not have e-mails sent to your university address
forwarded to other addresses. Our experience in the last semester has shown
that using non-university addresses / forwarding mails will lead to our
messages bouncing back in very many cases.
Very
useful background information on key cultural and literary contexts of Herrick’s
time can be found here: Christoph
Heyl, Kleine Englische
Literaturgeschichte. J.B. Metzler. ISBN-13: 978-3476045096.
Just in case your application is rejected by the LSF system: If you want
to do this course because you are genuinely interested, you will be most
welcome, no matter what LSF says. Please get in touch with claudia.hausmann@uni-due.de
who will enrol you manually. The worst that might happen to you is that you
cannot do a Leistungsnachweis if you
lack the formal requirements.
