German Novel in Long 18th Cent

3 Credits · Level: Graduate

In eighteenth-century Germany, the novel emerged as a key site of both generic innovation and the negotiation of cultural and social norms. As literacy rates rose and the book trade flourished, the German middle classes sought out literature, and the novel in particular, as a means of asserting their cultural and social identity. The international success of sentimental epistolary novels from England and France, such as Richardson's Pamela and Rousseau's The New Heloise, inspired numerous translations as well as Goethe’s runaway hit, Die Leiden des jungen Werther (1774). The popularity of such novels among young female readers in particular led to fears about “Lesewut” and the capacity of literature to corrupt young minds. This course will explore the history of the novel in the long eighteenth century through background readings and close analyses of canonical works in four important subgenres: the sentimental novel of letters (Sophie von la Roche, Geschichte des Fräulein von Sternheim, 1771); the psychological novel (Karl Philipp Moritz, Anton Reiser, 1785/86); the Bildungsroman (Goethe, Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, 1795/96); and the Künstlerroman or Romantic novel (Novalis, Heinrich von Ofterdingen, 1800). We will also explore Goethe’s enigmatic 1809 novel Die Wahlverwandtschaften, which draws on the language of the natural sciences to account for shifting “affinities” in the social realm. Readings and class discussions will be concentrated on key issues in the scholarship on the eighteenth-century novel, including but not limited to: narrative structure and genre; the novel’s relationship to autobiography; identity and subjectivity; communication and media history; gender and sexuality; class and social mobility; religion and secularization; visuality and aesthetics; and embodiment and disability. Course Goals and Tasks On a thematic level, the course aims to help students acquire a nuanced understanding of the transformation of the novel in the eighteenth century and its significance for German and European literary modernity. Through readings and discussions of scholarly and theoretical literature, students will learn to identify and implement different theoretical and critical approaches to the novel. After the first week, secondary readings will be limited so that we will have more time to focus on close readings of the novels. In the process of reading and commenting on eighteenth-century novels, students will develop their own critical perspectives and integrate them into broader reflections on literary history, genre, and culture since the 1700s. On a lexico-grammatical level, the course seeks to help students become competent and confident users of high-level German-language academic discourse. Special emphasis will be placed on enhancing academic vocabulary and developing awareness of the stylistic and rhetorical complexity of academic and literary texts through repeated exposures. Students will be expected to participate actively in class discussions using academic vocabulary and complex grammatical structures in German, and will be encouraged to reflect on their own academic development at the meta-level. Writing tasks include a short article summary, occasional one-page response papers, and a final analytical paper on a text of the student’s choosing. In addition, each student will be asked to do a ten-minute oral presentation on one of the texts discussed in the class. Occasionally, students will be asked to take notes or prepare discussion questions for individual sessions; this will count as part of your class participation grade.