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Seminar: Melville's Short Novels - Details
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Veranstaltungsname Seminar: Melville's Short Novels
Untertitel Amerikanische Literatur; Aufbaumodul: Amerikanische Literatur; Aufbaumodul Amerikanistik Literatur I; Aufbaumodul: Amerikanistik Literatur I
Semester WS 2016/17
Aktuelle Anzahl der Teilnehmenden 3
Heimat-Einrichtung Amerikanistik / Literaturwissenschaft
Veranstaltungstyp Seminar in der Kategorie Offizielle Lehrveranstaltungen
Erster Termin Montag, 10.10.2016 18:15 - 19:45, Ort: (AKS 35 Seminarraum 3)
Voraussetzungen Students who have successfully passed their “Introduction to Literary Studies” (Basismodul Einführung in die englische und amerikanische Literaturwissenschaft) are welcome to this course on Herman Melville's short novels or long short stories respectively.
Lernorganisation All students will need a copy of the following books:
Delbanco, Andrew. Melville: His world and work. New York: Vintage Books, 2006. Print. [ISBN 9780375702976] ca. 15 €
Melville, Herman, and Dan McCall. Melville's short novels: Authoritative texts, contexts, criticism. New York: Norton, 2002. Print. A Norton critical edition. [ISBN 0393976416] ca. 12 €]

A bibliography and further details will be available when we meet in October.
Leistungsnachweis Students who want credit for this class will have to pass quizzes, give a short presentation in class, and write a Hausarbeit / an essay at the end of the semester. More detailed requirements will be presented at the beginning of the semester.
Studiengänge (für) Amerikanische Literatur / LA Gym, LA Sek (ANG.03202.02)
Aufbaumodul: Amerikanische Literatur / LA Gym, LA Sek ab WS 2012/13 (ANG.05280.03)
Aufbaumodul Amerikanistik Literatur I / BA Anglistik und Amerikanistik 60/90 LP (ANG.04628.03)
Aufbaumodul: Amerikanistik Literatur I / BA Anglistik und Amerikanistik 60/90 LP (ab WS 2015/16) (ANG.06158.01)
SWS 2
ECTS-Punkte 5

Räume und Zeiten

(AKS 35 Seminarraum 3)
Montag: 18:15 - 19:45, wöchentlich (13x)

Modulzuordnungen

Kommentar/Beschreibung

Herman Melville (1819-1891) started his career as a writer with novels of adventure set in the South Seas. Some critics read his novels Typee (1846) and Omoo (1847) as memoirs today. Melville's fame and following was then established with Mardi (1849), Redburn (1849) and White-Jacket (1850) that also exploit the author's familiarity with pagan societies for which he showed more respect than many of his contemporaries. Then in 1851 Moby-Dick appeared. It established Melville's fame, but only in the 20th century when he was rediscovered. Other works published soon afterwards created confusion, such as Pierre (1852), a psychological and moral study of his childhood that was overshadowed by his family's business going bankrupt and his father becoming insane. In the latter 1850s Melville tried his luck with a historical romance, Israel Potter (1855) before he turned to writing shorter fiction collected in a recent Penguin edition as Billy Budd, Bartleby, and Other Stories (Penguin, 2016). This collection includes "Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street" (1853), Benito Cereno (1855), and Billy Budd, Sailor, which was not completed until just before Melville's death in 1890. We will focus on these selected shorter pieces that were also published in a convenient Norton critical edition by Dan McCall, Melville's Short Novels: Authoritative Texts, Contexts, Criticism (2002), which we will use as a textbook.

Arguing that Melville was a 19th century writer with a 20th century mind who made estrangement in the modern city a topic in "Bartleby," questions the role of America in dealing with slavery in Benito Cerino, and challenges gender roles in Billy Budd, this class sets out to read Melville in biographical context. Andrew Delbanco's biography Melville: His World and Work (New York: Vintage Books, 2006) will supplement the Norton Critical edition as a second book that all students are expected to read in the course of the semester. The aim of this class is to gain a better understanding of the critical mind Melville whose writings were all but forgotten in the 19th century and not rediscovered until the 1920s.

In order for students to pick up some skills necessary in academia, we will spend some time on how to do research and presentations as well as how to write papers. The university library (OPAC, MLA-IB and other databases) will be a topic as will be the Internet as a research tool (JStor, Google Scholar etc.). In addition, there will be an introduction to CITAVI and how to use that bibliographical tool.