30652 - German Literature 2 (2nd cycle)

Learning outcomes

At the end of the course, the student will have acquired in-depth knowledge about various aspects and problems regarding literary history. The student will have a sound knowledge of the individual authors and works, and will be able to evaluate the literary quality of the works that have been studied, analyzing the texts according to specific critical methodologies.

Course contents

 

Film and Literature

Film and literature are independent media. But they have been in close intermedial contact since the beginning of film history. In 1896, Louis Jean Lumière created Faust, a cinematic work of art that Wikipedia describes as an “illustrative excerpt” of Faust. Film and literature are also both art forms that, at their best, achieve what constitutes the power of a work of art: to relate to the reading or spectating subject and offer him a fictional world with which he can confront his real one and, at best, better understand it. As much as both can become tools of ideology, in the best cases they can also reveal what ideology seeks to hide (Adorno).

The term literary adaptation, which is often used, is imprecise because it usually suggests that a director must construct his work in such a way that it does justice to the literary original and that the transformation can ideally be rated as successful. This subordinates the film to the literary text. For this reason, film adaptations of literature are sometimes viewed with skepticism in both literary studies and film studies. On the one hand, it is feared that this would endanger film as an independent art form, but on the other hand, such film adaptations are often seen as inferior works that wanted to deny the autonomy of the original by changing them.

It is often forgotten that not only film wanted to benefit from literature, but that literature also adapted film techniques from the outset in order to advance to new narrative forms, think of Alfred Döblin's Berlin program (To novelists and their critics) from 1913, in which he propagated film techniques that he then knew how to use in his novel Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929).

Starting with the literary work, the course will confront it with its cinematic implementation in order to describe and analyze both aesthetic and narrative strategies. The question of whether such an implementation can be regarded as successful will not play a role. Most literary examples will belong to the narrative genres, but transformations of theatrical texts will also be considered. At the beginning there will even be a filmic version of a medieval text, the Nibelungenlied, realized by Fritz Lang in 1924.

In most examples, like this particularly extreme, the two are separated by a significant temporal distance. This raises another question: does the film only want to portray the past, as a historical film, or does it see a parallel to its reality in the literary world that an author holds against the “real” world? How does the film feel meant by the work of the past? Does he recognize something historically unpaid there?

Usually German-language films are compared to the text, but French, Italian or Anglo-American films are also discussed.

The examples listed here will be expanded and varied during the course. Only a few can be dealt with in detail. In any case, the following is just a small selection that cannot even be representative. Works not listed here can also be worked on in the form of a term paper/tesina for the examination. The course will deal with the following in detail in text and film:

• Büchner, Woyzeck
• Thomas Mann, Tod in Venedig
• Jurek Becker, Jakob der Lügner
• Nibelungenlied

Nibelungenlied- Fritz Lang: Die Nibelungen. 1: Siegfried, 2: Kriemhilds Rache, 1924

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Faust (1808) – René Clair: La Beauté du diable (Der Pakt mit dem Teufel) 1950 - Alexander Sokurow, Faust (2011)

Heinrich von Kleist: Die Marquise von O (1808) - Éric Rohmer, 1976

Georg Büchner: Woyzeck (1836/37) - Werner Herzog, 1979

http://www.controappuntoblog.org/2016/01/10/woyzeck-by-georg-buchner-full-text-film-di-werner-herzog/

Theodor Fontane: Effie Briest (1894/1895) - Rainer Werner Fassbinder,1974, Titel: Fontane Effi Briest oder Viele, die eine Ahnung haben von ihren Möglichkeiten und ihren Bedürfnissen und trotzdem das herrschende System in ihrem Kopf akzeptieren durch ihre Taten und es somit festigen und durchaus bestätigen)

Heinrich Mann: Professor Unrat (1903/4) - Josef von Sternberg, 1929–30

Thomas Mann: Der Tod in Venedig (1911) - Luchino Visconti, Morte a Venezia,1971

Heinrich Mann: Der Untertan (1914 ) - Wolfgang Staudte, 1951

Marieluise Fleißer: Pioniere in Ingolstadt (1928, 1929 und 1968) - Rainer Werner Fassbinder 1970

Bertolt Brecht: Die Dreigroschenoper (1928) - Georg Wilhelm Pabst, 1931

Alfred Döblin: Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929) - Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Fernsehserie, 1980

Erich Kästner: Fabian. Die Geschichte eines Moralisten(1931) - Dominik Graf: Fabian oder Der Gang vor die Hunde, 2021

Irmgard Keun: Nach Mitternacht (1937) - Wolf Gremm, 1981

Günter Grass: Die Blechtrommel (1959) - Volker Schlöndorff, 1979

Jurek Becker: Jakob der Lügner (1969) - Peter Kassovitz, 1999

Siegfried Lenz: Deutschstunde (1968) - Peter Beauvais, Fernsehfilm, 1971.

Heinrich Böll: Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum (1974) - Volker Schlöndorff und Margarethe von Trotta, 1975

Bernhard Schlink: Der Vorleser (1995) - Stephen Daldry (2008)

 

The course will be held in German. Each participant must eitherwrite a home assignment or present a seminar paper. 

The programme for non-attending students has to be arranged with the professor

Readings/Bibliography

 

Forschungsliteratur:

• Alfred Döblin: An Romanautoren und ihre Kritiker. Berliner Programm, 1913. Der Text wird zu Beginn des Kurses als pdf zur Verfügung gestellt
• http://www.controappuntoblog.org/2016/01/10/woyzeck-by-georg-buchner-full-text-film-di-werner-herzog/
  
• Weitere Texte werden zu Beginn des Kurse in Form eines reader hochgeladen
  

Literarische Werke/Film: zwei Werke aus dieser Liste sind vorzubereiten

- Georg Büchner, Woyzeck

- Thomans Mann, Der Tod in Venedig

- Jurek Becker, Jakob der Lügner

- Nibelungenlied, in moderner deutscher oder italienischer Übersetzung

 

Es wird empfohlen, eine tesina/Hausarbeit zu erstellen

 

 

Teaching methods

Seminar lessons

Assessment methods

The exam consists in an oral interview. During the interview the methodological and critical skills acquired by the student will be evaluated . The student will be invited to discuss the texts covered during the course and to move within the sources and bibliographical material in order to be able to identify in them the useful information that will enable to illustrate the similarities and cultural areas of the discipline. The achievement of an organic vision of the issues addressed during the classes and their critical use, which demonstrate ownership of a mastery of expression and specific language, will be assessed with marks of excellence. Mechanical and / or mnemonic knowledge of matter, synthesis and analysis of non-articulating and / or correct language but not always appropriate will lead to discrete assessments; training gaps and / or inappropriate language - although in a context of minimal knowledge of the material - will lead to votes that will not exceed the sufficiency. Training gaps, inappropriate language, lack of guidance within the reference materials offered during the course will lead to failed assessments.

Office hours

See the website of Michael Gottlieb Dallapiazza