Lecture Textual Analysis

Autumn semester 2009

Prof. Elisabeth Bronfen and Dr. Annika Bautz

Tuesdays 14.00-15.45

venue t.b.a.

(1.) 15 September – The Text(s) of Literature

-- what is a text

-- what does reading a text mean

-- how to get started reading

(2.) 6 October – Structuralism and Its Uses

-- similarity, difference, repetition as the seminal structural markers

-- what is a structural analysis

-- how can we describe the structure of a scene

-- how do structures, themes, arguments interrelate

(3.) 13 October – Pleasures and Dangers of Irony

-- why do we use irony

-- how do we determine, how do we describe ironic distance

-- how do we interpret an ironic voice

-- how do we determine the meaning of an ironic voice

 (4.) 27 October – A Question of Rhetorics

-- what is the difference between the figurative and the literal

-- how do tropes work

-- how is meaning transferred into tropes

-- what is gained, what is lost in figurative speech

(5.) 10 November – The Time of the Tale

-- how do events relate to the time it takes to relate them

-- what is a sequence and what is its function

-- narrated time, time of narration

-- flashbacks and foreshadowings

(6.) 24 November – The Question of Focalization

-- from whose point of view is the story told

-- are there several, conflicting perspectives

-- is there a difference between the narrator’s and the characters’ points of view

-- why does perspective matter

(7). 8 December – Reading Visuality

-- how to read paintings and photographs

-- how can rhetorical and narratological terminology be applied

-- the narrative dimension of the visual

-- the visual dimension of narrative