123043 PS Proseminar Literature (2014W)

The course will offer theoretical knowledge supplementary to the introductory lectures and furnish students with both practical skills in literary analysis as well as basic research skills indispensable to writing an academic paper in the field of Anglophone literature. Students will learn, amongst other things, how to use electronic and conventional research tools (online databases, conventional bibliographies, reference books) and will be shown how to approach the analysis of a work of fiction, a poem and a play. Special emphasis will be given to the concept of literary motifs and their hermeneutic function in literary texts and to aspects of narratology. The texts selected for discussion encompass the three major genres (fiction, poetry, drama) and several literary periods from the late Middle Ages to the 21st century. The texts chosen focus thematically on a wide variety of 'joys and pains of love' (erotic love, spiritual love, love of nature, love of God) and will include a narrative poem from Chaucer's 'The Legend of Good Women' (c. 1386), Shakespeare's play 'Much Ado About Nothing' (c. 1599), lyrics by Elizabethan poets, sacred poems by Metaphysical poets, Romantic and Victorian poetry as well as short stories by authors from the 19th c. to the present (including Thomas Hardy, Joyce, T.C. Boyle and several contemporary British and Irish writers).