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Lehrende: Prof. Dr. Peter Freese
Veranstaltungsart:
Hauptseminar
Orga-Einheit: Anglistik/Amerikanistik
Anzeige im Stundenplan:
Semesterwochenstunden:
2
Unterrichtssprache:
Englisch
Min. | Max. Teilnehmerzahl:
- | 50
Voraussetzungen und Empfehlungen:
Introduction to Literary Studies
Introduction to Cultural Studies
Literatur:
We will read/view and analyze the following texts and films:
The Natural (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2003 and ff.; paperback)
The Tenants (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2003 and ff.; paperback)
The Complete Stories (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1998 and ff.; paperback)
The Natural, dir. by Barry Levinson, with Robert Redford, Glenn Close, Kim Basinger et al.
The Tenants, dir. by Danny Green, with Dylan McDermott, Snoop Dogg et al.
Kommentar:
Bernard Malamud (1914-1986) is best known for his 'modern classic' The Assistant (1957) and for his bestseller The Fixer (1966), which won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. But both his long neglected first novel, The Natural (1952), which is a marvelous transposition of the medieval Parzival story into the world of professional American baseball, and his fifth novel, The Tenants (1971), which one critic has called an evasive answer to the question as whether a liberal Jew can write the great American black novel, have rarely been awarded the attention they deserve.
We will first read The Natural, which is a fascinating experiment in 'updating' archetypal literary constellations and a good illustration of T. S. Eliot's suggestion that a "continuous parallel between contemporaneity and antiquity" could provide a "step toward making the modern world possible for art." We will then study The Tenants, which is an accomplished metafictional exploration of both the achievement of artistic perfection and the relationship between art and life, and which explores these essential questions by confronting a Jewish and an African American novelist, a white man and a black man, a Jew and an anti-Semite, a polished professional and an inspired amateur, thus devising a metaphorically charged comment on the relationship between Jews and African Americans in the dysfunctional American melting pot.
Our analyses of these two novels will be complemented by an interpretation of selected stories, which are outstanding examples of post-war American short fiction and which often employ the forms and rhythms of the Yiddish folk tale to explore the pains and promises of life and love.
Wichtige Hinweise:
Participants are expected to have read The Natural and selected stories by the beginning of term. After an introductory session, the seminar will be conducted as a Blockveranstaltung in three Friday/Saturday sessions (Friday 14 – 18; Saturday 9 – 13; dates to be announced). The course will be limited to fifty participants.
Blockveranstaltung: in three Friday/Saturday sessions (Friday 14-18; Saturday 9 - 13; dates to be announced)
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