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Vorlesungsverzeichnis >> Fakultät Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaften >> Anglistik >>
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Still waiting for the End of the World: Apocalypses in American Literature (PS II)- Dozent/in
- Daniel Gall
- Angaben
- Proseminar
2 SWS, benoteter Schein
Zeit und Ort: Mi 18:00 - 19:30, MS12/015 (außer Mi 4.7.2007); Einzeltermin am 4.7.2007 18:00 - 19:30, MS12/009; Bemerkung zu Zeit und Ort: Am 4.7.2007 findet die Veranstaltung in MS12/009 statt.
- Voraussetzungen / Organisatorisches
- Please register by e-mail: virinluster@gmx.net
Weblog-Adresse: http://apocalypses-in-american-literature.blogspot.com
- Inhalt
- When Christopher Columbus set sail for the Americas in the 1490s, he believed it was in fulfilment of biblical prophecies that made him the discoverer of the “new earth” that the book of Revelation talks about. Some 120 years later, the prophetic call became even louder when Puritan settlers colonized the Massachusetts Bay in pursuit of what they believed was the final phase of human history, that would come to an end in this brand new and undefiled place. Our class will search for this end of history, in literary terms: after working out some central topics – time, authority, power (such as power over readers), transformation, and salvation - with a reading of the source text, Revelation, we will turn to Puritan frontrunners like John Cotton and their heirs in thought, like Jonathan Edwards, see how they constructed the end of the world in their apocalyptic writings, and what role the end of the world played on the cultural and political scene of the US in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Some time shortly after the French and American Revolutions, the apocalyptic genre went secular: at an increasing rate, writers of fiction began to strip the apocalyptic of its theological contents and reworked it into their plots of secular history. We will read excerpts by Nathaniel Hawthorne and a novel by Herman Melville, The Confidence Man: topics like (historical) transformation and salvation will still play a role. Crossing into the horror genre, some of the stories of H.P. Lovecraft will be waiting for us, whose works were a major step in the area of secular apocalyptic. This will also give us a chance to observe what apocalypse came to mean in science fiction literature, which was one of the genres the man was touching on. Lastly, we’ll try to follow the way of apocalyptic in recent American literature: novels like Paul Auster’s The Country of Last Things and Cormack McCarthy’s The Road give an often radically new shape to the literature of last things, while also listening back to traditions of the genre.
Just a couple of things will be necessary for a “Schein” in this class – regular attendance & participation (!), reading work, a 500-700 word response paper (due in the middle of the semester), and a 3.000-4.000 word term paper (due by the middle of August). There will not be oral reports – Referate – in this class.
- Empfohlene Literatur
- A selection of theoretical works and text excerpts will be available at the beginning of the class in the weblog I set up for the course, where you can read and/or print them out, if you want – additional texts will be made available online over the course of the semester. We will read two novels full length (Herman Melville – The Confidence Man & Paul Auster – In the Country of Last Things) – in our opening session in April, I’ll make some remarks on what editions are available, but basically you can use any you like. At the beginning of the class, students are expected to be familiar with the biblical source text for about any study of the apocalyptic, The Revelation of St. John, which we will discuss in our first sessions. I would suggest using the New International Version of Scriptures, but you are free to use any other edition you might prefer.
- Englischsprachige Informationen:
- Credits: 6
- Zusätzliche Informationen
- Erwartete Teilnehmerzahl: 24
- Institution: Professur für Anglistik und Amerikanistik mit Schwerpunkt Amerikanische Literaturwissenschaft
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