Seminar: Aufbaumodul Englische Literatur: Crime in the Colonies - Details

Seminar: Aufbaumodul Englische Literatur: Crime in the Colonies - Details

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Veranstaltungsname Seminar: Aufbaumodul Englische Literatur: Crime in the Colonies
Semester WiSe 2024/25
Aktuelle Anzahl der Teilnehmenden 21
Heimat-Einrichtung Englische Literatur und Kultur
Veranstaltungstyp Seminar in der Kategorie Offizielle Lehrveranstaltungen
Erster Termin Montag, 07.10.2024 10:15 - 11:45, Ort: Seminarraum 2 [AKStr.35] (Angl.)
Teilnehmende Lehramtsstudierende
Voraussetzungen erfolgreich bestandenes Basismodul Literaturwissenschaft
Lernorganisation Please obtain the following novel:
de Kretser, Michelle. The Hamilton Case. New York: Back Bay Books, 2003. ISBN 978-0-316-01081-8
Behn's play will be made available in Stud-IP for download. The other texts can be found online. We will use the following versions:
An authoritative version of "Botany Bay" is available (with Midi File) in Mark Gregory's Australian Folk Song Archive here:
https://folkstream.com/010.html
A sung performance by John Williamson is here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWgnSD27P5E (most other Youtube versions are that indeed: other versions)
Frank McNamara's "Moreton Bay" is also available in the Australian Folk Songs Archive:
https://folkstream.com/061.html
The sung version recorded for the Ned Kelly movie (with Heath Ledger, 2003) is atmospherically well done and recommended:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sqr9jfaQJ5E
The original tune (Boolavogue) in a Dubliners' recording can be heard here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_rLT6Y93rk
A version with the lyrics is here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ha-3crJ335c
Kipling, Rudyard, "A Bank Fraud" in the Kipling Society's online edition with annotations, can be read here:
https://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/tale/a-bank-fraud.htm
Maugham's short story is available online here:
"Footprints in the Jungle"
https://gutenberg.ca/ebooks/maughamws-completeshortstories03/maughamws-completeshortstories03-00-h.html#footprintsinthejungle
Leistungsnachweis erfolgreiche Tests zu den Primärtexten
Referat
30-min. mündliche Prüfung
Studiengänge (für) LAG
LAS
SWS 2
ECTS-Punkte 5

Modulzuordnungen

Kommentar/Beschreibung

This seminar explores the interactions between law and literature within the British Empire, with the help of a post-colonial framework. We will investigate how selected colonial and post-colonial texts reflect and critique the cultural hegemony of the British Empire, focusing conceptually on the tensions between periphery and center, particularly on those regions represented as beyond the reach of British law. Our readings consider themes of legal transgression, justice, and victimization, and the identities of colonizers and colonized. We will also examine how these texts depict colonial oppression and resistance. Aphra Behn’s tragicomedy "The Widow Ranter" (1690) provides an early satirical depiction of colonial life in Virginia. We will analyze how Behn's contradictory portrayal of colonial versus indigenous life both in the political and the domestic realm challenges the legitimacy of English authority in the New World. Pottinger Stephens and Yardley‘s "Botany Bay" (1885) is one of the most famous Victorian ballads of penal transportation, a Music Hall success which uses convicts to articulate warped perceptions of the "criminal underclass". We will contrast this with the actual convict ballad "Moreton Bay" (1830), attributed to the Irish convict Frank MacNamara (a.k.a. Frank the Poet), representing the murder of Commander Patrick Logan of the Moreton Bay penal station (17.10.1830). Rudyard Kipling’s short story "A Bank Fraud" (1888), which we will read next, examines moral ambiguities: the young author's ambivalence towards British imperialism combines with his scathing satire of Methodism to display a twisted colonial morality in the Raj. Somerset Maugham‘s "Footprints in the Jungle" (1927) satirises colonial justice in British Malaysia. The story's exploration of adultery and murder serves as a backdrop for examining the reach (or not) of British notions of law and justice. Michelle de Kretser’s novel The Hamilton Case (2003), finally, revisits the colonial past of Sri Lanka as well as its civil war to consider the lingering impact of (post-)colonialism on both personal past and national culture. The novel's plots and narratives, partly using Maugham’s short story, open space for a discussion of historical traumata.