"Stranger Things: The German Novella"

Goethe’s famous description of the novella as an “unheard-of event” holds true to this day: scandals, murder, and the supernatural abound in this seminal German genre. Both meticulously structured and notoriously difficult to define, the novella as a form mirrors the paradoxes of its narratives. In this course, we will ask how form and content come together in the novella to engender strange occurrences that vacillate between everyday experiences and fever dreams. What is it about the German novella that creates such a particular sense of unease, and how does this genre mediate modern experience? [In English. All students welcome.]