Introduction to English Literary and Cultural Studies WS 2024/25 by

1. Why do people engage with literature? Why do you engage with literature?

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IV. Knowledge and Complexity; or: What is an apple?

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2. Name three criteria that are most central to your understanding of “literature”?

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2 cont.

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"Choose one characteristic (other than your own) and comment on it (in agreement or disagreement)." (18)

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Session 1: What is literature?

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a) please invent a narrative's

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character
setting
challenge/conflict

b) Please chose one character, setting and challenge to create a short narrative

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by combining it

from

starting point/initial situation

via

development

outcome

c) Please make the characters meet and revise the narrative accordingly

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group 1 & 2

group 2 & 3

Literature as narrative, a story/plot that makes sense

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f) what has your narrative got to do with yourself?

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3. What is intertextuality? What is discourse?

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3. what is Intertextuality? What is discourse?

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Is the author dead?

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4. Why, according to Culler, does literature matter?

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5. Does literature mirror or mould society?

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6. How would you describe the relatedness of author, text and reader?

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VII 7. What is literary studies all about? 8. (Why) does it matter?

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INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE AND CULTURE

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41132

FRIDAY 14.00 - 17.00

GW I, S 120

Beginn: 01.11. 2024

Course Description:

This foundational course offers an introduction to basic skills for the study of literary and filmic texts with a focus on works from Great Britain (as well as, in this group, the Caribbean and Africa). It provides students with the scholarly terminology and methodological tools for analysing lyric, dramatic, and narrative texts, as well as film. Furthermore, we shall explore fundamental concepts such as ‘genre’, ‘literary history’, ‘canon’, and ‘culture’.

I. Why does Culler argue that it does not matter to define literature?

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"But both literary and non-literary works can be studied together and in similar ways." (18)

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"The model for historical explanation is thus the logic of

stories: the way a story shows how something came to happen, connecting the initial situation, the development, and the outcome in a way that makes sense." (19)

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"What is literature?' asks not for a definition but for ananalysis, even an argument about why one might concern oneself with literature at all." (20)

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"...rather than ask 'what is

literature?' we need to ask 'what makes us (or some other society) treat

something as literature?'" (22)

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"...when language is removed from other contexts,

detached from other purposes, it can be interpreted as literature

(though it must possess some qualities that make it responsive to such

interpretation)." (25)

BUT is it about being written? published? Only?

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it is about being evalued/ selected? (26)

they are worth to be read/heard (27)

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Aren't there special ways of

organizing language that tell us something is literature? (27)

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rhetorical figures

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Literature, we might conclude, is a speech act or textual event that

elicits certain kinds of attention. lt contrasts with other sorts of

speech acts, such as imparting information, asking questions, or

making promises. Most of the time what leads readers to treat

something as literature is that they find it in a context that identifies

it as literature: in a book of poems or a section of a magazine, library,

or bookstore. (27)

Language and communication

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Literature as the 'foregrounding' of language
Literature is language in which the various elements and components of the text are brought into a complex relation.

Fiction and Interpretation

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fiction: The literary work is a linguistic event which projects a fictional world that includes speaker, actors, events, and an implied audience (an audience that takes shape through the work's decisions about what must be explained and what the audience is presumed to know). Literary works refer to imaginary rather than historical individuals (Emma Bovary, Huckleberry Finn), but fictionality is not limited to characters and events. Deictics, as they are called, orientational features of language that relate to the situation of utterance, such as pronouns (1, you) or adverbials of place and time (here, there, now, then, yesterday, tomorrow), function in special ways in literature. (30-31)

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3. aesthetics

Intertextuality

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Intertextuality

II

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What are then three anchoring plots of a (hi)story?

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starting point/initial situation

development

outcome

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escape my reality, traveling into another reality

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interest in contents; new knowledge, interesting

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entertainment

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storytelling

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engagement with culture and literary history

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spark my creativity - creating a story/film in my own head

Does literature need to be written?

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No, but this understanding is core to our understanding of literature; "being written" helps to demarcate literature from other forms of art

d) perspective and knowledge

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What do you know and why?

who speaks?

whose thoughts and emotions are focalised?

III

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What is literature for you?

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William Blake - The Little Black Boy

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