123251 AR Literature Course - Literature 1/2 (MA) British/Irish/New English & Cultural Studies (2021S)

NB
Due to the ongoing public health situation, this course will be taught online. All scholarly articles as well as some excerpts from literary texts will be made available on Moodle. The three assignments are to be turned in as .doc files or .pdf files via email (sylvia.mieszkowski@univie.ac.at), which means there is no need for you to come into Department while it may not be safe to do so.

Care to delve into the 18th century for a few months? In this course we are going to look at a literary genre that used to be immensely popular with readers between the 1680s and the 1770s. Not only did epistolary fiction entertain, it also helped to form moral codes and notions of identity for the newly dominant middle classes, as well as its understanding of gender. We are going to start with a few bits and bobs of historical and genre information, and then move on to Samuel Richardson's Pamela or Virtue Rewarded (1740), which created an absolute reading frenzy. While Pamela became celebrated for its enticing first-person narrator and focaliser, the second set text is a multi-perspectival epistolary novel, Tobias Smollett's The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1771). In the last few lessons of term we'll leave the 18th century behind, and take a look at how the epistolary form has been updated by discussing Cecelia Ahern's Where Rainbows End (2004). As a representative of the renaissance which 'novels written in letter-form' went through in the 21st century, this text will enable us to compare topoi and understand how contemporary discourses of consciousness and intimacy might build on and differ from those that arose 270-odd years ago.

To kick us off, we'll spend some time to establish common ground, as far as general knowledge about the 18th century is concerned, and I'd like to do this interactively. If you wish to participate in this AR, please send to me via email attachment (TWO DAYS before our very first lesson) TWO QUOTES (anything between one and six lines, with FULL bibliographical information) and ONE IMAGE which, according to you, is typical of the 18th century and/or provides useful information about the period, which helped you to personally understand a bit of it better. Please use PowerPoint to send these quotes/image: one slide for each quote, and another for the image (so three ppt slides in total) and please also add your name to each slide. I'll upload a template you can use on Moodle. The FIRST of the two quotes should be taken from an 18th century source - could be literary or journalistic or philosophical. The SECOND quote should be from a late 20th or 21st century scholarly source. I might ask you to comment in class on your reasons for choosing these quotes/this image, so please be prepared to say a sentence or two about each.

Specialist model:
There will be no monological student presentations in this class. Instead you are expected to act as a specialist for one lesson of the term, either alone or as a member of a team, depending on the number of participants. How exactly this works in terms of timing, what will be expected of you and what a 'prep mail', 'the double-feedback-loop' and a 'golden nugget' is, in all of which you are going to participate, I shall explain in detail in the first lesson.