Seminar: Vertiefungsmodul Themen, Genres, Epochen der amerikanischen Literatur/Amerikanistik Literatur II, Anglistik Literaturwissenschaft: Themen, Motive, Autoren der englischsprachigen Literatur I und II - Details
Seminar: Vertiefungsmodul Themen, Genres, Epochen der amerikanischen Literatur/Amerikanistik Literatur II, Anglistik Literaturwissenschaft: Themen, Motive, Autoren der englischsprachigen Literatur I und II - Details
Seminar: Vertiefungsmodul Themen, Genres, Epochen der amerikanischen Literatur/Amerikanistik Literatur II, Anglistik Literaturwissenschaft: Themen, Motive, Autoren der englischsprachigen Literatur I und II
Untertitel
"I Went to the Woods": Ecology and American Literature
ANG.03929.02 und ANG.03934.02:
MA Angloamerikanische Literatur, Sprache und Kultur (120 LP) und MA Englische Sprache und Literatur (45/75 LP);
ANG.03210.01: LAG, LAS;
ANG.04630.01: LAG, LAS ab WS 12/13;
Mag., D, LA (alt)
American nature has a tantalizing hold on the imagination of American writers, whose creative responses range from nature worship to ecological concerns. Organized around the basic question “What is environmental literature?”, this course will explore the ways in which American thinkers, prose writers, and poets have understood and written about nature and how their thoughts and writings still shape our attitudes towards and understandings of nature today. Guided by Greg Gerrards’ work Ecocriticism (2011), we will discuss several major positions in contemporary criticism and key concepts such as “pastoral,” “wilderness,” “urban/toxic,” and “apocalypse.” Our journey through the wilderness of American literature will begin with the Puritans’ notion of the evil “wilderness” before we will move on to Henry David Thoreau’s musings in Walden; from there we will venture forth and take big steps across the US literary landscape: realism and local color stories, naturalism, early nature writing, modernism and the lost generation, modernist poetry, Native American renaissance, and contemporary apocalyptic literature.
It is advisable to read the novels in advance.
Required Texts:
- Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony (Penguin 1986)
- Cormac McCarthy, The Road (Vintage 2007)
- A reader with primary and secondary texts will be made available at the beginning of the course.
