Englisches Seminar - Ruhr-Universität Bochum

LITERATUR/CULTURAL STUDIES
Vorlesungen
050 645 Freitag
American Literature and Culture: From the Civil War to World War II, 3 CP
2 st. mo 14-16 HGB 10
This is the second part of a three-part lecture series that introduces important
developments of US-American literature as part and expression of the shaping of US
American culture. Occasional references to visual and popular art are meant to
broaden the general perspective. While well-established periods and movements like
Realism, Naturalism, and Modernism will be covered, the lecture series will also
show how these periods and movements came to be canonized and what other
developments in literature and art were thereby influenced, excluded, and/or
devalued. Shorts stories, poems, and excerpts from longer texts will be supplied on
Blackboard.
Each part of the lecture cycle can be attended independently of the other parts.
Assessment/requirements: regular attendance, reading, written end-of-term test.
050 636 Niederhoff
The English Novel in the Eighteenth Century: From Aphra Behn to Jane Austen,
3 CP
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2 st. do 8-10 HGB 10
The title of Ian Watt’s The Rise of the Novel implies that the novel came into being in
the eighteenth century, with Daniel Defoe as its founding father. In my lecture, I will
take a critical look at this assumption, taking into consideration the contribution of
such founding mothers as Aphra Behn. I will also discuss the problems involved with
the criterion of realism, which Watt and others attribute to the new genre of the novel.
A further emphasis will be on the representation of class conflict, which occurs
frequently in connection with marriage. The lecture will touch upon a broad range of
novels, but the main focus will be on the following works: Aphra Behn, Oroonoko;