Kommentiertes Vorlesungsverzeichnis Anglistik Heidelberg SS 2008

5 HAUPTSEMINARE
Texts: David W. Lindsay’s excellent anthology The Beggar’s Opera and Other 18th-Century Plays
is, unfortunately, out of print. Get it if you can or acquire at least the following texts in any edition
you can find:
Addison, Cato; Gay, The Beggar’s Opera, Lillo, The London Merchant; Goldsmith, She Stoops to
Conquer; Sheridan, A School for Scandal. We will also deal with Farquhar’s The Beaux’ Stratagem
and Susanna Centlivre’s The Busybody.
Scheinerwerb: Regelmäßige Teilnahme (1 LP); Vor- und Nachbereitung (3 LP); Referat o.ä. (1
LP); Hausarbeit (3 LP).
The Uses of History: Historical Novels of the (late) 20th century
Prof. Nünning Dienstag 09:15 – 10:45 108 2st.
Is “postmodernism” still an adequate term for those tendencies that are discernible in British fiction
at the beginning of the 21 st century? What is “postmodernism”? In how far do renowned authors –
whose works of the 1980s and 1990s were often called “postmodern” – deviate from established
patterns? What are the characteristic features of (at least a small number of distinguished)
contemporary works of fiction?
In this “Hauptseminar” we will try to answer these questions. After a short theoretical introduction
(which will not extend to the basics of the analysis of narrative works! Do make sure that you know
the most important narratological concepts beforehand) we will analyze the following novels:
Registration: (please as soon as possible – usually I get more than 40 registrations before the end
of term) per email: vera.nuenning@urz.uni-heidelberg.de.
Texts: Ian McEwan, Saturday (2005); Julian Barnes, Arthur and George (2005); Zoe Heller, Notes
of a Scandal (2003); Nick Hornby, A Long Way Down (2005); Zadie Smith, On Beauty (2005).
Course Requirements: In addition to regular attendance and active class participation (1 CP) and
preparation/homework time (3 CP), participants will be expected to make an oral presentation (plus
a handout) (1 CP) and write a ‘Hauptseminararbeit’ (3 CP) if they want to receive a
‘Hauptseminarschein’.
Poetics and Poetry: British and American Romanticism
Prof. Schulz Mittwoch 09:15 – 10:45 113 2st.
The emergence of Romanticism as a literary movement involves a drastic break with previously
held assumptions about the nature of poetry and the function of the poet. Thus the Aristotelean
notion of mimesis, i.e., the idea that poetry should imitate nature, is replaced by a theory of the
imagination as a creative rather than imitative faculty. The poet’s chief task, then, is to revitalize
our imaginative grasp of reality, to make us see things in a new light, and thereby re-create the
world for us. In the wake of what they perceived as the failure of the French Revolution, European
Romantics tended to locate the renovation of the world in an imaginary, transcendent realm of
ideas. Their American counterparts, in contrast, managed to hold on to the vision of a New World in
both idealistic and socio-political terms. – British writers to be discussed include William
Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Percy Bysshe Shelley (texts will be photocopied). As
regards American Romanticism, our key documents (all included in The Norton Anthology of
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