GERM 301 - Senior Seminar

Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)

Topic for 2019/20a: Excessive Speech: Language, Violence, and the Question of Style. Nietzsche once claimed that it was his ambition to “say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a whole book—what everyone else does not say in a whole book.” In contrast to Nietzsche’s explosive brevity, however, many authors are famous for exploiting German’s grammatical flexibility to produce excessively long and convoluted sentences. This course explores the question of style in the German literary tradition as a response to changing political concerns about the relationship between language and violence—as well as more existential and epistemological concerns about language’s ability to represent reality. Topics may include Nietzsche’s critique of language, the so-called “language crisis” (Sprachkrise) of the Romantic period, and the implications for writing literature in the language in which the Holocaust was carried out. Authors may include Ingeborg Bachmann, Thomas Bernhard, Anne Duden, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Elfriede Jelinek, Heinrich von Kleist, Viktor Klemperer, and Dada and Expressionist poets. In addition to reading and interpreting texts, students also have the opportunity to explore the creative dimensions of writing in German. Jeffrey Schneider.

Prerequisite(s): GERM 260 or the equivalent.

Two 75-minute periods.

Course Format: CLS