480119 KO Literatur- und kulturwissenschaftliches Konversatorium (2022W)

The course is dedicated to the strange (and even rather exotic at the first glance) phenomenon of the late Soviet social and cultural life - the "cult of Englishness". It started - in the very limited form - after the WWII but had reached its full flowering in the second half of 1970s. Numerous translations of the classics and even contemporary authors of British literature, almost illegal "beatlomania" and the popularity of British rock- and pop-music and especially the adaptation of English "adventure" literature (mostly from Edwardian period), especially the crime prose by Arthur Conan Doyle, G.K. Chesterton, Agatha Christie, C.P. Snow and some others. The breakthrough happened after the first series of "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson" had been broadcasted on Soviet TV in 1979. That "Soviet Sherlock Holmes cult" was the most powerful representation of the phenomena which can be defined as "Soviet Victorianism".

Lectures, discussions, workshops, group screening of the movies etc.