LFU:online

Institut für Anglistik Institut für Anglistik

Mag. Dr. Elahe Haschemi Yekani, MA Mag. Dr. Elahe Haschemi Yekani, MA

609761

British and/or Postcolonial Literary Studies + Reading List: Travel Writing

VO 2

7,5

wöch.

semestral

Englisch

The lecture will provide a chronological overview of British and Postcolonial Literatures. It will familiarize students with the methodological tools for the analysis of literary genres such as drama, poetry and prose (longer and shorter forms such as the novel and the novella). They will get acquainted with the culturally specific conceptions of travel and challenge narrative conceptions of truth and objectivity.

“Writing and travel have always been intimately connected”, write Peter Hulme and Tim Youngs in their introduction to the Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing. This lecture will provide a chronological account of the various periods of English literature by following the motif of travel starting with the early modern pilgrimage and the exploration of the ‘new world’, to the Grand Tour and the contemplation of the picturesque by England’s leisured travellers in the 18th, to the writing of empire in the 19th century and its postcolonial challenges in the 20th century up to the contemporary traveller per se, the tourist. In the lecture, ‘travel’ will also be put in relation to forceful displacement and the intertwining of (colonial) centre and peripheries will be discussed in relation to the writing of former slaves and contemporary migrants. The lecture will discuss how travelling has shaped the emergence of British literature in a constant exchange with and in relation to other cultures.

lecture

oral exam on lecture material and reading list

Reading list and course material provided on OLAT. It is strongly recommended to read a number of core texts for the reading list in advance, e.g. Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Olaudah Equiano’s Interesting Narrative or Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea. Please use only critical editions by Penguin or Oxford University Press.

Anmeldevoraussetzung/en: positive Beurteilung der Pflichtmodule 3 und 16
Beginn: 04. März 2013