An Introduction to Literary Analysis (“Schreibprozesse”)

This course combines creative writing in German with literary theory. It is designed to develop aesthetic sensibilities by looking at sample literary texts and the methods they use to create their effects. While literary forms are too multifaceted to be reproduced according to a formula, there are nevertheless some techniques and forms of writing that can be garnered from exemplary literary texts and practiced in one’s own creative writing. What do metaphors, allegories, poems, stories, or dramatic scenes of others ‘feel’ like if they are read or if they are written by oneself? How is day-to-day story telling transformed into ‘literary’ story telling? What makes images into a poem, or a text into a film?
We will work on forms of metaphor and explore theories of metaphor and the creation of metaphors, then turn them into practice by writing examples ourselves. We will explore modern allegories by analyzing poems by H.M. Enzensberger and Sarah Kirsch, the sound and tonal qualities of poems by looking at Hugo Ball or Ernst Jandl. We will write examples of both ourselves as a kind of practice. We will also look into the use of paintings as models for literary texts. We will compare quotidian narration and literary narration by looking at examples by Kafka and Bachmann. In all these instances, we will write short examples of the poetic forms and narratives that we have studied and discussed. Finally, we will also consider how to move from a novel to the film version of the novel (Döblin’s ‘Berlin Alexanderplatz’).

A reader will be made available.