GK-Literary and Cultural Theories: Romanticism and Decreation
Jennifer Wawrzinek
Kommentar
The history of Romanticism scholarship has generally been preoccupied with what can only be described as the cult of the subject. Yet several Romantic writers around the turn of the nineteenth century can be seen to demonstrate an acute awareness of the problems associated with the assertion of the autonomous self, even if it is in the realm of politics and for the purpose of vindicating rights. This course aims to move beyond the concern with self and identity that has preoccupied traditional, and even more progressive, accounts of the field, in order to consider the ways in which some writers during the Romantic period can be seen to disrupt, destabilise, or altogether entirely erase the subject that has otherwise been seen as the distinctive innovation of Romanticism. Over the course of the semester, students will examine the modern theories of decreation by Simone Weil alongside the work of both canonical and non-canonical Romantic writers of the long eighteenth century in order to consider the extent to which the decreated subject allows Romantic writers a means of thinking new forms of politics and ethics in the socio-political climate of post-Revolutionary Europe.
Students are expected to acquire the following texts:
- Keats, John. Selected Letters. Penguin Classics.
- Weil, Simone. War and the Illiad. Routledge.
- Wordsworth, Dorothy. The Grasmere and Alfoxden Journals. Oxford World’s Classics.
- Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Penguin Classics.
- Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark. Penguin Classics.
16 Termine
Regelmäßige Termine der Lehrveranstaltung