This module is not currently running in 2024 to 2025.
This module examines a selection of essential texts drawn from the period from 1775 to the first years of the nineteenth century, in which German literature achieved European stature. It looks at innovation and newly emerging confidence in the treatment of the major literary forms (prose fiction, drama, and lyric poetry). But it also studies the currents of violence, passion and madness which these forms were used to convey in an era defined by the iconoclasm of the Sturm und Drang movement and by revolutionary upheaval in France. We will look at the original angry young men of German literature (Werther, Die Räuber), dramas of love and betrayal (Faust), as well as prose fiction which retains its power to shock and puzzle even today (Kleist). The texts studied treat desire, problematic relationships of power and gender, and the crisis of individuals caught up in the painful birth of European modernity.
Total Contact Hours: 20
Also available at Level 6 (GE585)
Essay (2,000 words) – 50%
Presentation (10 minutes) – 10%
Examination (2 hours) – 40%
Indicative Reading List
Any edition:
Goethe, Die Leiden des Jungen Werthers (Bristol Classical Texts)
Goethe, Faust I (Deutscher Klassiker Verlag)
Goethe, Römische Elegien (Reclam)
Friedrich Hölderlin, Poems and Fragments (Penguin bilingual edition)
Heinrich von Kleist, Sämtliche Erzählungen (Deutscher Klassiker Verlag)
J. M. R. Lenz, Die Soldaten and Der Hofmeister (Reclam)
Schiller, Die Räuber (Bristol Classical Texts)
See the library reading list for this module (Canterbury)
On successfully completing the module level 5 students will be able to:
Demonstrate critical knowledge and understanding of core topics in classical German literature, e.g. 'Sturm und Drang', the significance of the major literary forms (drama, prose fiction, poetry) at this time, and the different uses to which these forms were put;
Demonstrate competence in applying this understanding within new and differing contexts (e.g. to see formal innovation in relation to cultural-historical context);
Demonstrate the ability to analyse key texts (both primary and secondary) critically and to assess different genres of writing from the period 1775 to the first decade of the nineteenth century;
Demonstrate close reading and analytical skills, including the application of critical thinking to the study of German literature.
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