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Instructors: Prof. Dr. Jürgen Meyer
Event type:
Hauptseminar
Org-unit: Anglistik/Amerikanistik
Displayed in timetable as:
Language of instruction:
Englisch
Min. | Max. participants:
- | 50
Literature:
Recommended Literature:
Bredella, Lothar / Eva Burwitz-Melzer. Rezeptionsästhetische Literaturdidaktik mit Beispielen aus dem Fremdsprachenunterricht Englisch (Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 2004).
Comment:
Reading is an act of cognition. How, in how many ways, and why, do we respond cognitively to literary texts? – This class offers a survey of past and recent approaches to literary studies, all sharing their interest in a cognitive-receptionist point of view. We will discuss different periods of 20th- and 21st-century literary criticism, and their changing attitudes towards the mind. Beginning with older concepts such as “intentional fallacy” (Warren/Weaver) and the famous “hermeneutic circle” (Gadamer), we will progress towards more recent approaches (the 1970/80s’ reader response and the 1990s’ radical constructivism), until we arrive at the current debate launched at the beginning of the last decade, which seeks to draw on, in challenging as well as controversial fashion, insights from the neurosciences (representatives being Alan Palmer and Lisa Zunshine).
We will discuss a sample of texts which offer either significant theoretical positions in relation to the cognitive paradigm, or theory-induced applications of this paradigm to the reading of literary texts. These will be presented as a reader by the beginning of the winter semester. Important background information, connecting our approach to specific problems in Fachdidaktik Englisch, is available in Bredella/Burwitz-Melzer (2004).
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