Courses

Not just since yesterday, the visual media have turned literature into a historical medium. We watch movies, play video games and read on tablets—if we read at all. Therefore, this class takes the opportunity to think about what is so specific about literature, since the literary text is not just a text, but an aesthetic medium. The theoretical readings and practical analyses aim at developing the theoretical basis for an “art of the text.” Each text starts at its very beginning: on paper or on a desktop, and it ends with images, emotions, and voices that a literary text can evoke. This journey leads to the rhetorical “common places” (topoi), that since antiquity have been used to map out the literary text—and the special way it creates worlds. Along the way, this class will provide a thorough outlook over classical rhetoric and literary aesthetic as well as modern and post-modern literary theory.