Seminar Magic Realism From Chaucer to Dickens Mo 12:30h

Based on popular assumptions the middle ages are associated with magic magical objects and action while post-Enlightenment literature is more readily associated with realism realistic characters in real settings. Yet fictional stories can never truly depict real life and similarly a suspension of disbelief is something that we as readers must bring to any given text in order to believe in the world that is being created. Thus, despite the chronological divide between the medieval and the modern we retain the tendency to talk about the magic of storytelling' and to judge fiction from the perspective of how closely it adheres to real life' regardless of its point of origin. In other words, precisely when we immerse into the reality effects of fiction, we fall prey to the magic of storytelling.    With this in mind, this seminar will take the concepts of magic and realism as starting points to discuss not only storytelling techniques but also concepts of subjectivity. For after all, both the magic and the real lie somewhere in between the reading subject and the constructed subjects within the text. By drawing on Foucault (Technologies of the Self) and Latour (Factish Gods), we will explore the construction and function of selves' within the framework of both magic and realism in literature. Please read 'The Franklin's Tale' from Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. You can find an interlinear translation here:   http://sites.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/teachslf/frkt-par.htm Englisch (MA, PO 2013) Universität Düsseldorf WiSe 2016/17 Long Katie