Seminar Earth Air Water Fire Elements of Literature 1780-1920 Di 14.30-16.00

The notion that there are four elements, earth, air, water and fire, goes back to antiquity and has had a various impact on Western literature and thought ever since. Modern science may have dissolved the more holistic world view of the ancients by replacing the classical fourfold with a less elemental multiplicity of atoms and quarks. Yet, earth, air, water and fire continue to play a key role in the way humans conceive of themselves and their environment. One reason why this is so is that the four elements have always been used to describe both the material world and the ideas that human beings have of their own existence and actions. Thus, we can still speak of people as entertaining airy thoughts, making fiery pleas, being down to earth, or suggestive of still water that runs deep. As such proverbial phrases indicate, the four elements are not only natural phenomena, but also cultural images by means of which the given is often inscribed into the man-made. Fire can stand for energetic modernity and mechanical progress, air for purity and freedom, water for smooth fluidity and earth for solid permanence. In this course, we will investigate how a number of texts from the long nineteenth century, a period of growing industrialization, use the imagery supplied by the four elements in order to reflect upon, and reimagine, a world in which the distinctions between the natural and the cultural were fundamentally called into doubt. To this end, we will study poems and prose works by Georg(e) Forster (excerpts from A Voyage round the World), William Blake, Percy B. Shelley (‘Ode to the West Wind’), John Clare, Thomas Hardy, Charles Dickens, George Eliot and Edward Thomas as well as, time permitting, theoretical and philosophical texts. Longer set texts (to be discussed in this order): Charles Dickens. Dombey and Son. Ed. Andrew Sanders. London: Penguin Classics, 2002. ISBN-10: 0140435468. (Caution: This novel is very long and will be discussed in the first half of the semester. We will concentrate on selected chapters, but it is worth reading the whole text; so please start doing so sooner rather than later). George Eliot. The Mill on the Floss. Ed. Gordon S. Haight. Oxford: OUP, 2015. ISBN-10: 0198707533. You will need your own copies of these two novels (please try to get hold of the above editions); all other material will be made available through an electronic Semesterapparat. General introductory reading: Gernot Böhme and Hartmut Böhme. Feuer, Wasser, Erde, Luft: Eine Kulturgeschichte der Elemente. 3rd ed. München: Beck, 2014. David Macauley. Elemental Philosophy: Earth, Air, Water and Fire as Environmental Ideas. New York: SUNY Press, 2010 (introduction on Google Books). Bemerkung The course is conjoined with a small international symposium entitled -Earth-Writing: Literature and Geography” which will take place at Schloss Mickeln on 28-29 April 2016. Students enrolling for the course are encouraged, and very welcome, to participate in this event. Further details will be provided in the first session or on request. Leistungsnachweis Anglistik IV: Modern English Literature Universität Düsseldorf SoSe 2016 Dr. Erchinger Philipp