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

Faustian Theme and Deutschwesen

The course will investigate the most important German language literary works centred on the figure of Faust from the genesis of the myth up to the present day, yet not adopting the expected traditional chronological approach. The main focus will lie on the two most important adaptations of the Faustian theme in German Language, Goethe’s Faust. Eine Tragödie (1808, alongside Urfaust and Fragment) and Thomas Mann’s Doktor Faustus (1947).

The investigation will not aim at retracing the extent to which Thomas Mann’s reception of Goethe’s Faust reflects on his own novel. At least since the middle of the nineteenth century, Faust has been considered “the most German of all German works of literature”. However, as far as Goethe’s work is concerned, the reader would hardly find any predominantly “German” characteristics, whereas Thomas Mann’s Faustus seems to pronouncedly revolve around critical issues connected to the topics of Deutschwesen (“German essence”), Deutschsein (“German being”), Deutschtum (“Germanness”). If we consider who explicitly tried to depict Faust as the embodiment of the quintessential German in the twentieth century, conceiving Faust in terms of “the most German” certainly does lead to great irritation – to say the least. In fact, first it was the Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenberg with his work Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts (1930, “The Myth of the Twentieth Century”) and, only a year later, it was Oswald Spengler who analogously “idealised” the figure of Faust.

Although they could hardly differ more to one another, Goethe’s Faust and Mann’s Doktor Faustus respectively mark the beginning and the provisory end of a clear development in the history of thought: the progressive ideologisation of culture, literature, and finally of all art.

Through a plethora of references to a supposedly Germanic ancestral past, this ideologisation became progressively perceived as Germanentümelei, that is, a Germanic nostalgia and the attempt at preserving an alleged German ethnicity that started gaining resonance since Klopstock and Gleim, – although, in fact, this ideologisation was only shamelessly exploiting the Germanic legacy in terms of Deutschtümelei (German chauvinism). Goethe could not have been more distant from this ideological exploitation. Since his very first engagement with the Faustian theme, he had always been mockingly critical towards any kind of chauvinist misinterpretation. Although the idea of a national-cultural supremacy had previously emerged and Schelling had already connected Faust with the German character, the ideologisation of Deutschtum was not relevantly emphasised during Classicism and Romanticism. Yet the ideological tendencies and movements that will have burst out by the middle of the nineteenth century were always present.

Goethe and Thomas Mann will therefore represent both the starting points and the main focus of the course. We will then concentrate on the beginning of the Faustian theme in the so-called Volksbuch, on the early affinity between Faust and Luther’s Reformation, on the pre-Goethean documents and their potential ideological entanglements. We will draw attention on the first half of the twentieth century by examining the works of Klaus Mann and Else Lasker-Schüler and, finally, we will focus on the Faustian female figures of the early twentieth and twenty-first century.

Each participant must write an essay. The following works will be dealt with during the course and each work may be chosen as the focus of the essay assignment:

1. Historia von D. Johann Fausten
2. Puppenspiele vom Doktor Faustus
3. Lessing: Faust-Projekt
4. Friedrich Maximilian Klinger: Fausts Leben, Taten und Höllenfahrt
5. Nikolaus Lenau und Heinrich Heine
6. Frank Wedekind: Franziska
7. Klaus Mann: Mephisto
8. Else Lasker-Schüler: IchundIch
9. Hanns Eisler: Johann Faustus
10. Faust-Bearbeitungen bei Brecht und Dürrenmatt; Volker Braun
11. Elfriede Jelinek: FaustIn and out
12. Thea Dorn: Die Unglückseligen

 

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

 

1) SECONDARY LITERATURE

• Manuel Bauer, Der literarische Faust-Mythos. Grundlagen – Geschichte – Gegenwart. Stuttgart 2018, Chapter 1; 4; 7; 8; 9; 11; 12
• Jochen Golz, Faust und das Faustische. Ein abgeschlossenes Kapitel deutscher Ideologie? In Zeitschrift für deutschsprachige Kultur & Literatur, 23/2014, 407–427.
• Kristin Småbrekke: Thomas Manns Doktor Faustus – Roman der deutschen Kultur und ihrer Anfälligkeit für den Faschismus. Oslo 2008 (disponibile online, sarà messo tra i materiali)

Additional literature will be provided during the course

2) PRIMARY TEXTS

– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust. Ein Fragment

– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust. Der Tragödie erster Teil

– Thomas Mann, Doktor Faustus

It is recommended to read Goethe’s Faust I and Thomas Mann’s Doktor Faustus before the beginning of the course.

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