552.330 (21W) Issues in Literature: Dark Romanticism

Wintersemester 2021/22

Registration deadline has expired.

First course session
15.10.2021 12:00 - 14:00 Online Off Campus
... no further dates known

Overview

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it may be necessary to make changes to courses and examinations at short notice (e.g. cancellation of attendance-based courses and switching to online examinations).

For further information regarding teaching on campus, please visit: https://www.aau.at/en/corona.
Lecturer
Course title german Issues in Literature: Dark Romanticism
Type Seminar (continuous assessment course )
Course model Online course
Hours per Week 2.0
ECTS credits 6.0
Registrations 23 (25 max.)
Organisational unit
Language of instruction Englisch
possible language(s) of the assessment English
Course begins on 15.10.2021
eLearning Go to Moodle course

Time and place

Please note that the currently displayed dates may be subject to change due to COVID-19 measures.
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Course Information

Intended learning outcomes

Bitte orientieren Sie sich an der englischsprachigen Beschreibung.

Teaching methodology including the use of eLearning tools

Bitte orientieren Sie sich an der englischsprachigen Beschreibung.

Course content

Bitte orientieren Sie sich an der englischsprachigen Beschreibung.

Intended learning outcomes

The crucial aim is to increase the awareness of the need to unveil the many strata of meaning in the process of reading a Dark Romanticist text that in most cases has much more to offer than the narrative that is presented to us on the surface.

Teaching methodology including the use of eLearning tools

Lecture units, PPT presentations, discussions of Dark Romanticism's original texts (poems, plays, novellas, novels etc.) in relation to their adaptations (e.g. music/lyrics, videogames, TV-series, movies, postmodern and contemporary literature) using multimedial excerpts, complemented by student presentations; portfolio, term paper; All written texts (primary and secondary) as well as links (to videos, game-clips etc.) will be made available via Moodle.

Course content

With a focus on Dark Romanticism, primarily written works created in the British and American tradition of the Gothic Novel and the unique, sombre poetry of Dark Romanticism a) either in written works exclusively or b) in their subsequent adaptations across the media, are to be investigated.

Intermedial connections will be drawn, sessions on the use of poetry in series such as PENNY DREADFUL are planned. Songs and music videos as well as videogames will prove to be enwoven tightly, too.

Bleak imagery, diction, literary/poetic form, and the polysemy of possible readings when texts are adapted across the media deserve the course’s attention in terms of analyses of aspects brought to the fore through recontextualisation in search for deeper layers of meaning.

Selected texts, poems, novellas, novels, shorter ones or at least extracts for class reading, by the New England writers like Edgar Allan Poe (in his case also poetry, his lyric protagonists like Annabel Lee, and himself as an iconic poet who has been reimagined as a person(ality) when transposed into other media like songs, films, comics), Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville will be considered, alongside British examples like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, John Polidori’s short story The Vampyre (1819) and especially the poetry and the lyric dramas written by Lord Byron (e.g. Manfred and single poems), Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Kubla Kahn, The Rime of The Ancient Mariner), Percy Bysshe Shelley (among others: Prometheus Unbound), and other (affiliated) works by authors of a rather darkish poetry that deserves attention.

More naturalistic New England writers like Edith Wharton and Henry James (his shorter narratives, his essay “The Art of Fiction”) are distinctly interesting because mythic, fictional creatures and beings like ghosts are then rather being regarded as emblems of psychological events.

Considering followers in the tradition, LeFanu’s essential masterpiece Carmilla and Irishman Stoker’s Dracula (1897) plus their subsequent adaptations across the (visualising) media, lead the way. Plus: Horace Walpole: The Castle of Otranto;

The dichotomy of reality and fiction is especially made visible in adaptations/remedialisations like the movie GOTHIC, which portrays Byron and the Shelley’s in a way which merges reality with fiction. This constitutes yet another way of bringing further fields of interest to the fore, such as the one tackled in the song “Byronic Man” from the album Thornography and the lyrically unmodified intro “A Curse of the Grandest Kind” (from Manfred) on The Vision Bleak’s album Set Sail to Mystery. Dark Romanticism's influence on popular music- and videogame-culture is paramount and many examples referencing his texts exist, which would be analysed during the semester.

Literature

Parker, Reeve (2011). Romantic Tragedies – The Dark Employments of Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley. (1st ed.) New York: Cambridge University Press.

Rovira, James (ed.) (2018). Rock and Romanticism – Post-Punk, Goth, and Metal as Dark Romanticisms. Palgrave Studies in Music and Literature.

McAdams, Charity (2017). Poe and the Idea of Music – Failure, Transcendence, and Dark Romanticism. Lanham: Lexington Books.

– excerpts as well as additional literature will be made available via Moodle;

Examination information

Im Fall von online durchgeführten Prüfungen sind die Standards zu beachten, die die technischen Geräte der Studierenden erfüllen müssen, um an diesen Prüfungen teilnehmen zu können.

Examination methodology

mündlich: Kurze Präsentation, 

aktive Teilnahme an DIskussionen literarischer und multimedialer Texte sowie deren Adaptionen, 

schriftlich: Portfolio/Seminararbeit (auch eine Mischform ist möglich), 

zwei kürzere Hausarbeiten (jeweils ca. 2 Normseiten) sollen ebenso während es Semesters verfasst werden, die sich inhaltlich bereits dem selbst zu wählenden Thema des finalen schriftlichen Term Papers annähern, um in einem bestimmten Interessensbereich im Feld des Dark Romanticism einen hohen Lerngewinn zu erzielen;

Examination topic(s)

Kompetenzen in der Interpretation der Kontexte sowie der Form und des Inhalts literarischer Texttypen des Dark Romanticism und ggf. diverser multimedialer Adaptionen;

Assessment criteria / Standards of assessment for examinations

mündlich: Kurze Präsentation, aktive Teilnahme an DIskussionen literarischer und multimedialer Texte sowie deren Adaptionen, 

schriftlich: Portfolio/Proseminararbeit (auch eine Mischform ist möglich), zwei kürzere Hausarbeiten (jeweils ca. 2 Normseiten) sollen ebenso während es Semesters verfasst werden, die sich inhaltlich bereits dem selbst zu wählenden Thema des finalen schriftlichen Term Papers annähern, um in einem bestimmten Interessensbereich im Feld des Dark Romanticism einen hohen Lerngewinn zu demonstrieren (Kompetenzen in der Interpretation der Kontexte sowie der Form und des Inhalts literarischer Texttypen des Dark Romanticism und ggf. diverser multimedialer Adaptionen);

Examination methodology

short presentation, active participation in class discussions, portfolio/term paper (hybrid form possible)  two two-paged home assignments with a focus on your term paper's topic of choice; 

Examination topic(s)

literary interpretation of Dark Romanticism's texts and their adaptations -- active participation, short presentation, twice you'll be asked to submit a two-page home assignment preparing for the final portfolio/term paper (hybrid form possible; on your paper's topic of choice), all of which is intended to emphasize students' knowledge gained within the field of Dark Romanticism's literature;

Assessment criteria / Standards of assessment for examinations

active participation, two brief assignments, short presentation, portfolio/term paper, all of which need to emphasize students' knowledge gained within the field of Dark Romanticism's literature;

Grading scheme

Grade / Grade grading scheme

Position in the curriculum

  • Teacher training programme English (Secondary School Teacher Accreditation) (SKZ: 344, Version: 04W.7)
    • Stage two
      • Subject: Advanced Culture Studies (Compulsory subject)
        • Topics in British Culture Studies ( 2.0h SE / 4.0 ECTS)
          • 552.330 Issues in Literature: Dark Romanticism (2.0h SE / 6.0 ECTS)
  • Teacher training programme English (Secondary School Teacher Accreditation) (SKZ: 344, Version: 04W.7)
    • Stage two
      • Subject: Advanced Culture Studies (Compulsory subject)
        • Topics in American Culture Studies ( 2.0h SE / 5.0 ECTS)
          • 552.330 Issues in Literature: Dark Romanticism (2.0h SE / 6.0 ECTS)
  • Bachelor's degree programme English and American Studies (SKZ: 612, Version: 15W.3)
    • Subject: Literatur- und kulturwissenschaftlich ausgerichtetes Wahlfach (Compulsory elective)
      • 9.1 Issues in Literature ( 0.0h SE / 6.0 ECTS)
        • 552.330 Issues in Literature: Dark Romanticism (2.0h SE / 6.0 ECTS)
          Absolvierung im 4., 5. Semester empfohlen
  • Bachelor's degree programme English and American Studies (SKZ: 612, Version: 15W.3)
    • Subject: Freie Kombination (Compulsory elective)
      • 10.1 Freie Kombination ( 0.0h SE / 12.0 ECTS)
        • 552.330 Issues in Literature: Dark Romanticism (2.0h SE / 6.0 ECTS)
          Absolvierung im 5., 6. Semester empfohlen
  • Bachelor's degree programme English and American Studies (SKZ: 612, Version: 15W.3)
    • Subject: Vertiefung (Compulsory elective)
      • 10.1 Vertiefung ( 0.0h XX / 12.0 ECTS)
        • 552.330 Issues in Literature: Dark Romanticism (2.0h SE / 6.0 ECTS)

Equivalent courses for counting the examination attempts

There is no equivalent course for the purpose of counting examination attempts.