641220 world literary and intertextual analyzes: Multilingual Philology
summer semester 2019 | Last update: 17.06.2019 | Place course on memo listThis seminar offers an introduction into ‚Multilingual Philology‘ as a new field of literary studies. We will focus on methods to analyse how literary texts make use of linguistic diversity. On the one hand, we will look at the mixing of and switching between different, mutually incomprehensible languages in literary texts, e.g., on the level of characters’ speech; on the other hand, we will take a look at seemingly unremarkable forms of literary multilingualism, e.g., the use of poetic forms that are taken from heterolingual literary traditions.
We will read both fundamental theoretical and literary texts. On the one hand, students will thereby be acquainted with new developments in literary and cultural theory (e.g., critiques of the concept of the ‘native speaker’) and with methodological thoughts on literary multilingualism; on the other hand, we will work with a number of literary texts that represent different ways of making use of linguistic diversity. The literary texts are mostly taken from (more or less) German language literature.
Both the theoretical and the literary texts will be explored in open seminar discussions. In preparation, the students will be asked to experiment with the methods of Multilingual Philology as previously discussed in the seminar.
Short term paper (ca. 12 pages) on a literary text.
1. Yasemin Yildiz, Beyond the Mother Tongue: The Post-Monolingual Condition, New York 2012.
2. Till Dembeck/Rolf Parr (Hg.), Literatur und Mehrsprachigkeit. Ein Handbuch, Tübingen 2017.
3. Till Dembeck, „Multilingual Philology and Monolingual Faust: Theoretical Perspectives and a Reading of Goethe’s Drama“, in: German Studies Review 41.3 (2018), 567–588.