Basisseminar 1a Introduction to English and American Literary Studies Methods of Literary Analysis Mo 16.30-18:00 26.10.2015-07.12.2015

This seminar is one of four teaching units of our Basic Module III - Literary Studies and is mandatory for students who study English as their major subject. It is linked with Prof. Roger Lüdeke's course on Literary and Cultural Theory, which he will be teaching simultaneously. The participants of the two courses will swap their lecturers and rooms after the first half of the term and are thus enabled to complete two units of the basic module in a single term. An additional registration for Prof. Roger Lüdeke's seminar is therefore necessary. Philipp Erchinger's part, which is made up of a series of seven sessions, is designed to introduce students to some of the standard methods, models and conceptual tools for the analysis of narrative texts, poetry, drama, and film. Based on Michael Meyer's English and American Literatures / UTB Basics (Tübingen & Basel: A. Francke, 2011), the course provides students with a specialist, though still basic and accessible, vocabulary that is supposed to enable them to describe the meanings, aesthetic effects and functions of literary texts and films in a detailed and nuanced way. The methodical concepts and terms introduced in the course will be illustrated and discussed by means of literary examples which range across the whole canon of English and American literature, from Shakespeare, Sterne, Wordsworth and Byron to Poe, Woolf, Joyce, William Carlos Williams and Audre Lorde. All students will need a copy of Michael Meyer's introductory book English and American Literatures / UTB Basics (Tübingen & Basel: A. Francke, 2011) in order to participate in this class. The text will be available at Stern Verlag on campus by the beginning of the semester. The reading process will be checked on a regular basis. Students have to complete all four teaching units before they are entitled to register for one of the final exams held in February/March 2016. Anglistik u.Amerikanistik (BA, PO 2011) Kernfach Universität Düsseldorf WiSe 2015/16 Dr. Erchinger Philipp