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EN206 Comparative Literature I: English and German Romanticism

This module has been discontinued.

This module is a core module for second year English and German students and an option for all others.

Objectives and Outline Syllabus:

The module covers the period from about 1770 to 1830, from the German ‘Sturm und Drang’ to the late romantic poetry of Byron and Heine. Although this is a period where there is a significant interchange of influence between the two literatures, the main focus of the seminars will not be on such influence but rather on the ‘family likeness’ between works in the two languages, on the comparative examination of themes and motifs.

Reading List

Texts will include:

Goethe, Selected Poems;

Wordsworth and Coleridge, Lyrical Ballads (1798);

Goethe, Die Leiden des Jungen Werther (1774);

Kleist, Die Verlobung in St Domingo (1808);

Scott, The Highland Widow (1826);

Goethe, Faust I (1808);

Shelley, Frankenstein (1818);

Chamisso, Peter Schlemihls wundersame Geschichte (1813);

Hogg, Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824);

Hoffman, Der goldene Topf (1812);

Eichendorff, Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts (1827);

Keats, Lamia (1819);

Fouque, Undine (1815);

Poems by Shelley, Novalis, Byron and Heine.

Pre-requisites

Students not taking a degree module involving the study of literature would be expected to have an A-level in English or in a modern foreign language, as well as a good reading knowledge of German.