123043 PS Literary Studies / Proseminar Literature (2020S)

Although not an invention of early modern literature, the genre of the utopia gained increased political relevance after Christopher Columbus’ and Amerigo Vespucci’s transatlantic voyages. The beginning of what is now euphemistically referred to as the ‘Age of Discovery’ paradoxically marks both, the utopia’s re-invention as a literary genre and the point at which labelling it as ‘fiction’ seems wholly inadequate. The irony of history is that the naming of the genre, in Thomas More’s Utopia (1516/1551), puns at good-place (eu-topos) and no-place (ou-topos) but coincides with the onset of its geographically very specific and dystopian consequences. More’s complex narrative will be the starting point of our brief survey of utopias. We will be looking at how authors after More, such as Francis Bacon, and Margaret Cavendish, utilised the concept of the utopia and its contingent early modern tropes. Furthermore, we will be referring to utopian texts from Classical Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and to modern-day theory of the utopia and its cognate forms.

This course will familiarise students with key techniques of academic research and text production. Participants will learn to critically analyse literary works while considering historical contexts and using appropriate theoretical concepts. This course builds on the contents of the literary and cultural theory introductory lectures and focuses on ‘doing’ theory. We will recapitulate the most relevant theoretical concepts from narratology, general literary theory, and rhetoric. During this course, students will plan a research project resulting in a short final paper.