LFU:online

The aim of this lecture is to familiarise students with key methodological and theoretical approaches to literary studies. Students will be trained in the application of the concepts and approaches that are introduced to a broad range of British and Postcolonial literary texts.

What reasons are there to care about literature? How does reading like a literary scholar improve our skills in reading the many other types of text that surround us in daily life? What does literature have to do with the negotiation of identities, and in what different ways does it relate to power and social hierarchies? What happens to literature in an age of digitalization?

All these and many more questions will be addressed in the Introduction to British and Postcolonial Literary Studies. Primarily, we will study, discuss and apply the tools literary studies offers for the analysis of the main literary genres: poetry, narrative and drama/theatre. In the course of this application, we will encounter and study a broad range of different texts from the history and the present of British and Postcolonial literatures.

lecture, partner and group discussions

written exam

A reader with mandatory introductory theory texts will be made available at the beginning of the semester at the Studia bookstore. You will also be asked to read excerpts from literary texts – those will be uploaded on OLAT each week and form a basis for the partner and group discussions.

The following books are recommended for introductory reading and for purchase:

Nünning, Vera and Ansgar. An Introduction to the Study of English and American Literature. UNI-WISSEN Anglistik/Amerikanistik. 7th ed. Klett, 2014.

Seeber, Hans Ulrich (ed.). Englische Literaturgeschichte. 5th ed. Metzler, 2012.

Döring, Tobias. Postcolonial Literatures in English. UNI-WISSEN Anglistik/Amerikanistik. Klett, 2008.

none