Theories of the Novel - Einzelansicht

Ever since the German philosopher G.W.F. Hegel persuasively defined the novel as the adequate literary form for the representation of a world that has become ‘prosaic’, the novel has been widely accepted, often praised and sometimes criticized as the dominant literary form on a global scale, the forma franca of modernity. In this seminar we will read a selection of influential theories of the novel that have, all through the twentieth century and beyond, attempted to describe the notoriously amorphous and shape-shifting ‘form’ of the novel; its social, political and identity-forming effects; and not least, its implication in the darker sides of modernity including imperialism, racism and toxically possessive individualism. We will read extracts from longer treatises as well as shorter self-standing theoretical essays from canonical as well as neglected thinkers including, among others, Georg Lukács, Ian Watt, and Mikhail Bakhtin, but also Firdous Azim or Sylvia Wynter. Since we assume that the literary text itself is always to some extent more than its theorization, we will use one paradigmatic novel – Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe – as a reference text that we will constantly visit in order to speculate to what extent our theory texts succeed, or fail, in their attempts to offer concepts and models for a systematic understanding of how novels work.

Students will actively contribute to this discussion not only by regular active participation in in-class debates but also in the form of poster presentations on selected theories of the novel (more on this in the first meeting in October). 

* Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (Oxford World's Classics ed by Thomas Keymer)

* more material will be made available via moodle

regular attendance and contribution to panel discussionwith short written feedback documentation (1000 to 1500 words).