Code 23832
Level of study Third/Final year
Credit value 10
Semester 1 or 2 (unlikely to be running in 2012-13)
Other pre-requisites Advanced knowledge of German (at least level B 2.2)
This course will outline the development of German literature from the Enlightenment through the Sturm und Drang to Classicism and beyond. It thus covers a period of social and cultural upheaval, and the course will explore the tensions between order and disorder provoked by the rise of a middle-class culture and evidenced, for example, in the protests of the Sturm und Drang and the German responses to the French Revolution, as well as in arguments about the nature of literature itself. The course will be based on the close study of a varied set of texts but will use them in order to examine the conflict between social norms and new ideas of individual authenticity, and thereby trace the evolution of conceptions of social class, gender and identity.
Semester 1 will focus on German literature before 1790, whilst Semester 2 will focus on German literature 1790-1815.