Studies in 19th-Century Literature and Culture: Prose

In Latin rhetorics, the notion of prose designated the straightforward (pro + versus) succession of metrically unbound speech. In the 18th century, this notion of prose was metaphorized and became a key concept in self-descriptions of modernity. Friedrich Schlegel claimed that “prose is the true nature of the moderns”, and Hegel defined modernity as the “world state of prose”. The seminar explores the transformation of notions of prose, reflections on the relation between poetry and prose and negotiations of the prose of the world in literary prose in exemplary readings of literary and theoretical texts from antiquity to the 19th century.