Exploring The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy Gentleman

In this course we are going to read one of the most interesting novels of the eighteenth century: Laurence Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. Interesting, because only a few decades after the novel had come to be established as a new and tremendously popular narrative genre, Sterne produced a narrative venture that tested the possibilities of this genre to its limits. With its eccentric characters, digressive plotline, experimental use of graphic elements and appeal to the reader’s active imaginary participation, Tristram Shandy has sometimes even been regarded as an anticipation of postmodern writing techniques. Reading this novel is a challenge, but a challenge that can also be a lot of fun. With its complexity and a thorough background of secondary literature, Tristram Shandy also provides a good basis for your first steps towards writing a term paper: the novel does not only provide enough food for thought, there is also ample material to probe your skills in bibliography and, especially, your ability to position your own paper within already existing research results. Last but not least, the comic version (by Martin Rowson) and the movie version of the novel (A Cock and Bull Story, dir. Michael Winterbottom) will also allow us to probe into discussions of literary adaptations. Students will be expected to have purchased the Oxford World’s Classics edition of Tristram Shandy (edited by Ian Campbell Ross) and to have read at least the first three volumes by the beginning of the summer term. In order to make sure we are all talking about the same text (editing may produce variations in this case), it is essential that you are all buying this edition – and no other one. (NB: the edition can be found in amazon, if you search for -life and opinions of tristram shandy-) Seminar für Anglistik Beachten Sie, dass Sie diesen Kurs nach den Prüfungsordnungen ab 2011 nicht besuchen dürfen, wenn Sie die für dieses Modulelement laut Fachspezifischen Bestimmungen und Modulhandbuch notwendigen Voraussetzungen ZU BEGINN DES SOMMERSEMESTERS noch nicht erfüllen. (Bitte lassen Sie in diesem Fall anderen Studierenden, die die Voraussetzungen besitzen, den Vortritt. Danke!) In folgenden Studiengängen MÜSSEN die jeweils genannten Voraussetzungen VOR Beginn des Sommersemesters vorhanden sein, um im Kurs Punkte erwerben zu können: Lehramt neu BA HRG: Modul 1 komplett erfolgreich abgeschlossen Lehramt neu BA GY: Modul 1 UND Modul 2 KOMPLETT erfolgreich abgeschlossen Lehramt alt GS/HR (sowohl Schwerpunkt GS als auch HR): Grundstudium abgeschlossen BA LKM ab 2011: Modulelemente 1.1 und 1.2 (d.h. die Studienleistungen in diesen Elementen) erfolgreich abgeschlossen 2 LP / 3 LP Studienleistung: regular, active participation; complete reading of novel; expert presentation on a piece of secondary literature on Tristram Shandy plus summary of the argument of the article (800-1000 words) - deadline: session where presentation is due 5 LP: see 2 LP / 3 LP Studienleistung PLUS compiling a bibliography on one of the topics discussed in class and uploading it in moodle - deadline: 30 June 2015 3 LP Prüfungsleistung: academic term paper of c. 4000 words, to be submitted by 27 August 2015 the latest; the topic for the paper must have been discussed with your course instructor by 2 July 2015 the latest. 7 LP: see the tasks for 2 LP / 3 LP Studienleistung PLUS the task for 3 LP Prüfungsleistung Universität Siegen SoSe 2015 Univ.-Prof. Dr. Müller Anja