Wintersemester 2011/12 - Institut für Anglistik/Amerikanistik ...

In his essay "The Role of the Writer in a New Nation," Chinua Achebe viewed the role of the postcolonial writer
as helping his/her "society regain belief in itself and put away the complexes of the years of denigration and selfabasement."
This imposing task includes looking critically at the colonial history of a nation, restoring lost selfworth
and dignity to a formerly colonized culture as well as filling the blanks and rewriting the key events of a
colonial master narrative from the colonized/anticolonial perspective. Caribbean writers have engaged in this
enormous task with various different texts and textual strategies. In this class we will look at Caribbean colonial
history and learn about key concepts of postcolonial theory before we venture into discussing poetry, dub poetry,
and novels by Robert Hayden, Louise Bennett, Lillian Allen, Ahdri Zhina Mandiela, Clifton Joseph, Maryse
Condé, Caryl Phillips, Lawrence Scott, and David Chariandy. The poems and secondary texts will be provided in
a reader. Please purchase and read the novels:
Maryse Condé: I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem. CARAF Books, 2009, ISBN-10: 0813927676.
Caryl Phillips: Cambridge. Vintage Books, 2008, ISBN-10: 0099520567.
Lawrence Scott: Witchbroom. Heinemann International, 1993, ISBN-10: 0435989332.
David Chariandy: Soucouyant. Arsenal Pulp Press, 2007, ISBN-10: 1551522268.
70136
Knopf (Lehrstuhlvertretung Prof. Mackenthun)
Hauptseminar
Mi. 13:15-14:45
AB8028
Women's Voices in American and Canadian Literature (HS)
In the Western hemisphere, patriarchal society, including patriarchal legislation and social conventions, have
imposed a legal and social silence upon women, who thus lacked equal rights and a public voice. Gender
stereotypes and ideas of women as inferior beings, belonging to the domestic sphere, and/or being less able to fill
positions within traditional male realms have accompanied women even after they gained suffrage, have been
implanted in women's thought, and have inhibited their developments even to this day. Writing was a profession
that allowed women to gain public voice and to give voice to the concerns and political, social, and economic
state of the 'second sex.' The 19 th century saw a development and self-conscious assertion of women's voices and
critique of the status quo. In this class we will discuss texts by American and Canadian women writers from the
19 th and 20 th centuries (Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Kate Chopin, Edith Wharton, Tillie Lerner Olsen, Susanna
Moodie, Isabella Valancy Crawford, Susan Frances Harrison, Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro, Aritha van Herk,
Sylvia Plath, and Anne Sexton), and thus trace different stages in the women's struggle for liberation from
patriarchal control in the US and Canada. The poems, short stories, and secondary texts will be provided in a
reader. Please purchase and read:
Edith Wharton: Ethan Frome. Intr. Pamela Knights. Wordsworth Classics, 1999 or later, ISBN-10: 184022408 x.
Kate Chopin: The Awakening. Ed. Nancy A Walker, Case Study in Contemporary Criticism, Bedford/St.
Martin's, 1999, ISBN-10: 0312195753;
Margaret Atwood: Surfacing. Nachwort Marie-Claire Blais. New Canadian Library, 1994, ISBN-10:
0771098995; or Anchor Books, 1998, ISBN-10: 0385491050.
Aritha van Herk: The Tent Peg. New Canadian Library, 1987, ISBN-10: 077109390X.
70133
Schultze
Hauptseminar
Di. 13:15-14:45
AB 8023
HS God’s plenty: Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and English Literature at the End of the 14th Century
Stricken by the Black Death, anxieties about religious orthodoxy, social upheaval and decades of what came to
be termed the Hundred Years War, the fourteenth century offers to English literary history for the first time
authors whom we can grasp. Chaucer doubtlessly is the best-known among them, and the fascination with his
oeuvre prevails to this day and time. By way of selected texts and critical approaches to them, students will study
late-medieval foundations of literature in English. Focussing on specifically medieval traits of literary
production, they will be enabled to evaluate continuities and discontinuities in literary form and content beyond
the middle ages. The course will be rounded up by discussions on modern film adaptations of The Canterbury
Tales.
Literature: A selection from the Canterbury Tales will be based on Benson, L., ed. (1987), The Riverside
Chaucer, 3rd ed., Oxford. A good, very recent introduction to Chaucer and medieval literature is Brown, Peter
(2011), Geoffrey Chaucer, Authors in Context, Oxford World’s Classics (available for less than EUR 7,-).
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