COMPARATIVE GERMAN LITERATURE

This course aims at presenting new crossover methodologies of research about German Literature and Culture and at deepening students’ critical approach to literary works. The student is required to use the new learned strategies by elaborating individual or group projects about literary topics or texts. The challenge is to apply and develop new strategies of hermeneutics on the literary texts during the course.

The course sketches epistemic innovations in different fields of humanistic knowledge and points out some turning points of literary research. It focuses on methodological topics and on their application. The methodologies will be applied on a main important topic: Body and consciousness in literary motifs: automat, shadow and Doppelgänger.

Body and consciousness in literary motifs: automat, shadow and doppelgänger

A Methodological texts (one volume out of the following)

- Lisa Zunshine, Introduction to Cognitive Cultural Studies, John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 2010.

- Lisa Zunshine, Cognitive Literary Studies, Oxford University Press, New York 2015.

- McGinn, Colin (2004). Mindsight: Image, Dream, Meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

- Stefano Calabrese, Leggere la mente, Bologna, Archetipolibri, 2012.

- Marco Bernini, Mario Caracciolo, Letteratura e scienze cognitive, Roma, Carocci, 2013.

B Consciousness: different approaches (one volume out of the following)

- Daniel Dennett, Coscienza. Che cos’è, trad. it. di Lauro Colasanti, illustr. di Paul Weiner, Laterza, Bari 2009.

- Antonio Damasio, Self comes to Mind, Contructing the Conscious Brain, Pantheon Books, New York 2010.

- Gerald Edelmann, Giulio Tononi, Un universo di coscienza. Come la materia diventa immaginazione, Einaudi, Torino 2000.

C Methodological application – (Individual or group work on one of the following texts)

- Adalbert von Chamisso, Storia straordinaria di Peter Schlemhil, Garzanti, Milano 2007.

- E.T.A. Hoffmann, L’uomo della sabbia e altri racconti, BUR, Milano 1998.

- Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, Mondadori, Milano 2002.

- Oskar Panizza, La fabbrica di uomini, Tranchida editore, Milano 2001.

- James M. Barrie, Peter Pan, Mondadori, Milano 2006.

- Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, Giunti, 2011.

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, Mondadori, Milano, 2005.

D Literature on the Doppelgänger

- Sara Anelli, Fantasmi dell’Io. Il Doppio nella narrativa gotica di E.T.A. Hoffmann e di E.A.Poe, CUEM, Milano 2006 (online).

The students will have to elaborate a research on one of the texts or topics proposed in the program looking for specific and up to date critical works on the web.

NB. Students of the Master course LM14 who do not have a B1 level in German will work on the texts translated into Italian.