32202
Advanced Seminar
SoSe 20: Sketches, Tales, and Stories: The Short Form in C19
Florian Sedlmeier
Comments
ONLINE COURSE. By all accounts, the nineteenth century is the century when American literature consolidates itself as such, gradually emancipating itself from its European predecessors. This process depends on the consolidation of a literary market and generates the emergence of new genres. The seminar discusses the varieties of the short form in C19 against the backdrop of these and other factors. We look at various genres of the short form such as essays, portraits, travel sketches, tales, tall tales, and the early short story. While we examine genre conventions and differences, we also discuss the possibility of a general affordance of the short form in the nineteenth century. Here a double contextualization seems crucial: on the one hand, the social and aesthetic effects resulting from an exponentially growing magazine market; on the other, the tension between experimental openness and pointed conciseness, which, per suggested hypothesis, may characterize the short form in general. Not least, toward the close of the nineteenth century short forms play a prominent role in the context of discourses of difference and their corresponding authorships (“women’s writing,” immigrant literatures, African American literature, Native American literature).
Students are expected to be diligently prepared and attend regularly. Term paper topics should be developed over the course of the semester.
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13 Class schedule
Regular appointments
Wed, 2020-04-22 12:00 - 14:00
Wed, 2020-04-29 12:00 - 14:00
Wed, 2020-05-06 12:00 - 14:00
Wed, 2020-05-13 12:00 - 14:00
Wed, 2020-05-20 12:00 - 14:00
Wed, 2020-05-27 12:00 - 14:00
Wed, 2020-06-03 12:00 - 14:00
Wed, 2020-06-10 12:00 - 14:00
Wed, 2020-06-17 12:00 - 14:00
Wed, 2020-06-24 12:00 - 14:00
Wed, 2020-07-01 12:00 - 14:00
Wed, 2020-07-08 12:00 - 14:00
Wed, 2020-07-15 12:00 - 14:00