Graduate Studies

MPhil in European Literature & Culture | Course content | Modules | GE Novel - Memory and Subjectivity in the German Novel

MPhil in European Literature & Culture

German | GE Novel

Memory and Subjectivity in the German Novel
(Convenor: Dr M Minden)

This module offers a framework within which to study the relation between fiction and autobiography that has come to dominate the European novel since the First World War. The particular focus is writing in German since the 1970s. Other texts, indeed other periods, are negotiable. The texts proposed have in common that they are short enough to be read by all members of the seminar, and that they are all examples of that particular blend of personal reminiscence, literary prose and the resources of fiction in which contemporary society seeks to deal with its own past and its own practices of identification. The German context provides a further thematic coherence in relation to an historical past that poses particular ethical and aesthetic problems for the writer in the German language. The choice of authors directs attention to gender-specific aspects of this practice. The chronological spread makes it possible to draw conclusions about the development of this literary practice in the final third of the twentieth century. Although the focus is on writing, the seminar will take account of the fact that, in and beyond the late twentieth century, literature needs to be defined in its functions as a medium, a practice and an institution, and in its relations to other media such as film, television and the internet. The integrity of works will be respected, yet the proposal is that each text should be considered in the light of the following topic headings (others can be added or substituted): identity and identification (the social construction of identity); language and the ethics of communication (the text as a means of working toward social and political networks); memory and narrative (the construction of meanings in which personal and collective interweave); testimony (bearing witness to suffering, injustice, loss); the unsayable (the literary means of addressing what lies beyond testimony, the traces of trauma in the personal and the collective memory). After an introductory section in which the framework for the seminar will be elaborated, defined and discussed, each ensuing session will be devoted to a paper presented by a seminar member or members, on texts that will have been read by the other members.

Further advice on how the module will operate can be obtained from Dr Michael Minden: mrm1001@cam.ac.uk.

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