Postwall Poetics: Corpora, Communcation, Media

In this course we explore German literature from the Wendezeit to the 21st century, focusing on a number of texts that can be defined as ‘body literature’. Rather than directly addressing the fall of the Berlin Wall, these texts employ a transgressive poetics. In themes of love, desire and death they tear down the walls between physical bodies and between literary bodies, thus opening up communication between texts, individuals, and nations. Topics include: the body, anatomy, vampirism, virtual reality, intertextuality, transmediality, transnationalism.

Required texts: Tawada: Das nackte Auge (Konkursbuch Verlag); Stein: Replay (C. H. Beck); Beyer: Das Menschenfleisch (Suhrkamp); Grünbein: Schädelbasislektion (Suhrkamp); Hettche: Nox (Suhrkamp); Braun: Die deutsche Gegenwartsliteratur (UTB).