17325 Vorlesung

Manfred Pfister

Surveying English Literatures I (auf Englisch)

Mittwoch, 12-14 Uhr
Gosslerstr 2-4, Raum 203

Beginn: 19. Oktober 2005

maximal 90 Teilnehmer

This lecture aims at providing students with a first overview of the history of English literature from the Renaissance to our postcolonial and postmodern present. The arrangement of this lecture series will therefore be fairly straightforward: one or two key texts for each period in chronological order, beginning in the early 16^thcentury and ending at the turn of the Millennium. In my choice of lectures I will go for what is representative of each period and its predominant genres, and my discussions of the texts selected will be framed by reflections on concepts of ‘period’ and ‘genre’. We will explore one text each week, relating it both to its particularly significant passages in close readings.

What should emerge from this is a history of Early to Postmodern English literature in terms of a canon of representative works. I stress ‘a’ history and ‘a’ canon as, of course, a different selection of texts – focussing, for instance, on women’s writing or on ‘voices from elsewhere’ – might lead to quite a different account of English literary history from mine.

As to the texts to be discussed, I have only decided upon the first four texts – More’s Utopia, Shakespeare’s Sonnets and Hamlet and Milton’s “Lycidas” elegy – and the last text, Coetzee’s novel Disgrace, so far. The texts in between will be announced at the beginning of term.

Students are expected to have read the text beforehand. All of them are readily available in paperback editions, and most of the shorter texts can be found in the two-volume Norton Anthology of English Literature. For those who wish to supplement my lecture by reading a one-volume literary history, I suggest the Englische Literaturgeschichte, ed. H.U. Seeber (Metzeler, 4^nd ed. 2004).