Texts that cross genres and playfully reference their own production have become a hallmark of post-modernist writing. They do, however, have a long tradition to look back to. In this course we will consider the literary history of hybrid genres and metafictional texts, starting with the first English novel, Beware the Cat (1553), only recently adapted to the stage (2019), which humorously blends Humanist satire, Ramus‘s rhetorics, dialogue, fable, fairytale, and political concerns. In moving to sonnet 18 by Shakespeare, we will discuss how metaphorical considerations of writing inform an otherwise conservative text and how these relate to the shift within the sonnet sequence initiated by this poem. We will then encounter a nearly forgotten text in William Davenant’s farce „Playhouse To be Let“ (1663), containing the first burlesque on the English stage, two pieces of heroic drama, and a translation of a French farce by Molière. What seems a very odd mix indeed is sensibly contained in a frame narrative full of topicality and an almost naturalist look at theatre conditions in the Restoration. As we will read this text in its Early English Books Online edition, this will provide participants with an opportunity of encountering historical printing and editorial presentation. Jumping several centuries ahead, we will finish our seminar with an analysis of Anne Carson’s art-object-poem Nox (2010). Carson, a contemporary, highly-decorated Canadian author and academic, who normally discourages autobiographical readings of her works, created a poem referencing her mourning the death of her brother and her attempts at translating a Roman eulogy by Catullus, in the form of a leporello. As this art book needs to be read as a physical object and is quite expensive, all other texts in this course will be provided in Stud-IP.
