Mi 14-16.00
Vorlesung:
English Literature in the Eighteenth Century
The eighteenth century was a particularly
interesting and exciting period in the history of English literature. This was
when the modern world – i.e. our world
– began to take shape. This was when many phenomena such as the journalism as
we know it and the novel came into being and immediately found a mass
readership. Due to special historical, cultural and social conditions, English
literature could develop in ways that would have been unthinkable on the
continent.
This
lecture course covers a wide range of texts and topics such as the rise of the
novel (and its various shapes and forms: epistolary, erotic, experimental,
Gothic etc.), other prose texts (travel literature, diaries and autobiographies
such as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s description of her experiences in Turkey,
James Boswell’s outrageously honest diaries and the autobiography of Olaudah
Equiano, an ex-slave), poetry (for instance Alexander Pope’s elegant and
polished pieces on topics such as stupid books by stupid people, and poems by
female authors addressing the issue of gender roles and the position of women
in society) and drama, including musical drama.
English
literature is more than Literature produced in England; this is why particular
attention will be paid to important authors from Scotland and their texts – you
will get acquainted with, for instance, Robert Fergusson and Robert Burns who
both highlighted the Scottishness of their texts by using elements of Scots
rather than standard English. We shall also consider connections between
literature and the visual arts as well as literature and music. This means that
there will also be lots to see and quite a bit to hear in this introduction to
eighteenth-century English literature.
It would be a very good idea to buy: Christoph
Heyl, Kleine Englische
Literaturgeschichte. J.B. Metzler. ISBN-13: 978-3476045096. The section on
the eighteenth century and Romanticism will give you a comprehensive overview.
If you also read about what happened before and after the eighteenth century,
you will gain a good grasp of long-term developments in the history of English
literature.
All texts to be discussed in this
lecture course are available in ECCO (Eighteenth-Century Collections Online).
You should familiarize yourselves with this digital resource before the
beginning of the semester.
Depending
on the further development of the pandemic, this lecture course 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 out moodle
Please
join the Moodle room for this lecture course (Vorlesung English Literature in
the Eighteenth Century). The password is V_EighteenthCentury_WS21-22 (but you
already know this because you are here). You will receive further information
via 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.
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.
