The Uncanny German Canon from Goethe to Kafka

Catalog description

Investigation of classic uncanny German literature from the late eighteenth to early twentieth centuries. Uncanny elements from ghosts and Doppelgänger to artificial life persisted across the literary movements of Romanticism, Realism, and Modernism. The course will explore this literature and also theories of the uncanny including Freud's psychoanalytic approach, Todorov's structuralist approach, and recent cultural-historical and post-colonial approaches. Authors may include: Goethe, Tieck, the Grimms, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Chamisso, Eichendorff, von Droste-Hülfshoff, Storm, and Kafka. Prerequisite: German 306 or above or equivalent knowledge of German.