Robinson & Co. - Islands in the English Literary Imagination, 1611-1719 - Einzelansicht

From Thomas More's Utopia to Daniel Defoe's famous castaway novel, early modern British literature is full of strangely alluring, enchanted, threatening, exotic or simply realistic islands. In our seminar, we will read a range of such 'island texts' in a variety of formats and genres from drama to poetry, from satire to novel, including William Shakespeare's play The Tempest and Daniel Defoe's novel Robinson Crusoe, among others. We will speculate on why islands should have lent themselves so readily as settings for literary representations. Spoiler: Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that Britain is also an island? 

Please buy and read:

William Shakespeare, The Tempest. Ed. Virginai Mason Vaughan and Aulden T. Vaughan. London: Bloomsbury (The Arden Shakespeare) 2011.

Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe. Ed. Thomay Keymer. Oxford: Oxford UP (Oxford World's Classics) 2007.

Additonal material will be made available on Moodle.

For 3 CPs ungraded: Regular attendance and a response paper (min 1000 words)

For 3 CPs graded: Regular attendance, a response paper (min 1000 words) and a critical bibliography.

Module papers will have to be discussed individually durung my office hours in the last weeks of the semester.