GERST 6370

19th Century Fiction: The Realist Project

Course Description

Course information provided by the 2023-2024 Catalog.

Examination of programmatic concepts of Poetic Realism in literature and theory. Special focus on the relationship between aesthetic theory and literary production (Hegel, Vischer, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche). Course will discuss the tension between the "prosaic" and "poetic" by investigating the status of topics such as "love," "adventure," and domesticity; suburban and garden spaces; the aesthetization of "work" and the "reality" of industrialization. Further attention will be paid to artistic developments that anticipate literary periods such as Naturalism, Expressionism and the Avant-garde. Questions of nationalism, science, and generic issues will be discussed in comparison to European developments of Realism. Seminar will also focus on contemporary re-elaborations of the Realist project: in relation to psychoanalysis, narrative theory, and current theories of memory, community, and spatial structures (architectonic or mnemonic). Authors include: Hegel, Vischer, Tieck, Keller, Droste-Hülshoff, Freytag, Fontane, Schmidt, Meyer, Raabe, Nietzsche, Freud, Stifter, Storm.

When Offered Spring.

Comments Anchor course. Readings in German; discussion in English and German.

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