Bitte beachten Sie: Dieses Hauptseminar ist nur für Studierende der Master- und Lehramtsstudiengänge geöffnet, nicht aber für Bachelor-Studierende!
Voraussetzungen
Einführung in die Literaturwissenschaft
Leistungsnachweis
Regular attendance and active participation; thesis paragraphs, written term paper.
Online/Digitale Veranstaltung
Veranstaltung wird online/digital abgehalten.
Hauptunterrichtssprache
englisch
Literaturhinweise
• All students must get hold of their own copies of the following texts:
Jeanette Winterson, The Stone Gods. Penguin, 2008 [2007]. ISBN: 978-0141032603
Colum McCann, Apeirogon. Random House, 2020. ISBN: 978-0593134511
Kae Tempest, Let Them Eat Chaos. Picador, 2016. ISBN: 978-1509830008
• A reader containing relevant secondary material will be provided in the first session.
• A detailed reading list will be made available at the beginning of term.
The occupation with ethics is probably as old as philosophy itself, and the debate around the ethics of literature has a similarly long history. There were those like Plato who criticised fiction for being essentially a lie, useless, or, worse, immoral. Against this accusation a longstanding line of defence of the literary argues that fiction has the double function of providing entertainment and being useful—and that one of the uses is specifically setting an example of the good life, of how to live ethically. In the more recent history of literary theory, ethics was relegated to the sidelines of the theoretical debate during much of the 1960s and 70s. It is only since the “ethical turn” of the 1980s that the study of literature and ethics has become prominent in the critical debate again.
In this course we will look at different theories from this recent period on how (or whether at all) fiction may be ethical and apply it to the analysis of texts from different genres. We will read some of the most prominent recent theories on ethics and/in fiction and discuss and compare those different approaches. The major approaches we will focus on are Martha Nussbaum’s Neo-Aristotelian ethics that, broadly speaking, seeks examples of the good life in literature, and Emmanuel Levinas’s ethics of radical alterity that has informed the critical debate around an “ethics of deconstruction”. We will also address the question whether a text can be ethical not just at the level of its contents but also via its formal structure.
The primary texts we will discuss will reflect the ways in which contemporary literature can possibly 'make a difference' by engaging its audience in ethical debate. In this seminar we will read two novels, Jeanette Winterson's The Stone Gods (2007) and Colum McCann's Apeirogon (2020) as well as one long poem/spoken word performance, Kae Tempest's Let Them Eat Chaos (2016) and one play, Tim Crouch's The Author (2012). [see Literaturhinweise for recommended editions]
Relevant secondary literature will be provided online.
Anmelderegeln
Diese Veranstaltung gehört zum Anmeldeset "ELW/ALW/NELK Aufbaumodul MA: HS".
Folgende Regeln gelten für die Anmeldung:
Die Anmeldung ist möglich von 02.10.2020, 10:00 bis 26.10.2020, 10:00.
Diese Regel gilt von 02.10.2020 10:00 bis 26.10.2020 10:00. Die Anmeldung zu maximal 3 Veranstaltungen des Anmeldesets ist erlaubt.
Es wird eine festgelegte Anzahl von Plätzen in den Veranstaltungen verteilt.
Die Plätze in den betreffenden Veranstaltungen wurden am 28.10.2020 um 10:00 verteilt. Weitere Plätze werden evtl. über Wartelisten zur Verfügung gestellt.
