GERMAN 580: SMNR IN GERMAN LIT
Brigitte Prutti
T 1:30-4:20, DEN 313
5 credits, sln: 13991

Late Modernist Prose: Thomas Bernhard

Who’s (still) afraid of Thomas Bernhard? or:  How to read late modernist prose that appears both extremely seductive and hypnotic while at the same time being highly resistant to reading?

The latter will be our main task in this course in conjunction with specific thematic and formal concerns. The Austrian novelist and playwright Thomas Bernhard (1931-1989) is a  writer of international acclaim; one of the major German-speaking postwar writers; a self-styled misanthrope and joker who sported the habitus of the landed gentry; an enfant terrible who often scandalized the Austrian public; and above all else, a formidable challenge to read.  He has been acknowledged as an important model by other well-known writers such as W.G. Sebald and has generated an extensive critical discourse.  His literary oeuvre consists of a substantial body of prose fiction, published between 1963 and 1986 (several longer stories, novels, shorter prose texts), five volumes of autobiographical writings, 18 full-length plays, and some early poetry etc. In this course we will focus on Bernhard’s accomplishments as a prose writer and discuss some of his most famous novels, stories and autobiographical texts (Frost, Das Kalkwerk, Alte Meister, Amras, Wittgensteins Neffe, Der Italiener, Gehen, Die Ursache, Ein Kind etc.) along with some pertinent critical essays. Our readings will engage Bernhard’s aesthetics of negativity, his fictional discourse on nature and artifice, specific modes of indirection, the topographical and genealogical order of his texts, their anti-narrative stance, histrionic and humorous qualities along with other significant aspects of structure and style. Students can expect to sharpen their analytical skills in reading modern prose fiction. Course requirements include active participation in class discussions, brief oral presentations, an annotated bibliography, and a critical paper (circa 15 pp.).  I ask that participants review basic narratological concepts in preparation of the seminar and plan to have read Matias/Martinez, Einführung in die Erzähltheorie (ordered at the UW Bookstore and available at Suzzallo) by week two of the course.

GERMAN 590: PHIL ISSUES GERM CULTURE
w/ COMP LIT 548A
Marshall Brown
MW 3:30-5:20, PAR 305
5 credits, sln: 13992

Moving at the rate of approximately one author per week, we will examine five pairings of a famous philosophical text with (mostly) roughly contemporaneous literary writing.  The aim will be to discern how the paired texts confront similar issues and thus how the philosophical texts which we read first (even when they were written later) provide approaches to understanding the literary texts. "Approaches" is the operative term, rather than "keys," because divergences in stance are as likely as convergences.  After all, if there were complete correspondence, we wouldn't need to read both.  Voltaire's Candide responds explicitly to Leibniz's Monadology; he is the only figure on the anticipated syllabus who had read the author with whom he is paired.

The obvious aim of this course will be to see what light philosophical readings, categories, and approaches may shed on the understanding and interpretation of literary works in various genres and from various periods.  Secondarily, it will explore the "literary," rhetorical and affective dimensions of philosophical texts.  Thirdly, the sequence of crucial philosophical texts can be regarded as a mini-survey of one line of development of philosophical thinking over the last four centuries; to that end, we will spend some time comparing the philosophers with one another.

The probable line-up is: Descartes's Discourse on Method with Hamlet; Monadology with Candide; Kant's Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysic with Wordsworth poems; Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals with George Eliot's Silas Marner; Heidegger's Origin of the Work of Art with Wallace Stevens poems.  Students who can should read the French and German texts in the original (French for Leibniz).

Students will write a 5000-word essay on a pertinent topic, starting early in the quarter and with feedback in stages.  You should decide in advance on the authors for your term paper.

GERMAN 591: INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF AESTHETICS (GERMAN INTELL HST)
Richard T. Gray
MW 1:30-3:20, DEN 312
5 credits, sln: 13993

This course will examine the establishment of aesthetics as discipline in Germany at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries. Topics to be discussed include: the foundations of idealist aesthetics; the autonomy of art; the role of semiotics in the definition and classification of literature and the arts; the sociology of authorship; theories of “genius”; the dichotomization of “high” and “low” literature; aesthetic theory as ideology. The seminar will be structured around readings of “classical” works in aesthetic theory: selections from A. G. Baumgarten’s Aesthetica, Lessing’s Laokoon, Kant’s Kritik der Urteilskraft, Schiller’s Ästhetische Erziehung, excerpts from Schelling’s theory of art, and Hegel’s “Introduction” to his Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik. These will be supplemented by shorter readings of essays by figures such as Moses Mendelssohn, Bodmer and Breitinger, and K. Ph. Moritz. The seminar will be organized as a “workshop” in which individual students or student collaboratives will supplement the primary course materials by pursuing independent research projects focused on a theme, problem, or author (a list of suggestions will be provided). Course requirements: one short (2-3 pp.) position paper on one of the common readings, presented orally as a stimulus for seminar discussion; one individual or collaborative written research project (approximately 20-25 pp.); presentation of this research in a “workshop” format at the end of the quarter.

Nota bene: A copy of the textbook order is posted on my office door, for those who may want to order books ahead on-line. Note that the Reclam edition of Schiller’s Ästhetische Erziehung should be the most recent one, with the “Nachwort” by Klaus Berghahn.

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