Topics in Prose Fiction: Media of Literature

The seminar will pose the question of literature’s media and media in literature. Our concern will not only be the medial preconditions (such as scripts, presses and postal networks) which made possible the emergence of literary cultures. The seminar will also explore the ways in which literary texts refer to media and media technologies. Whether it be perceptual media (e.g. telescopes) or pictorial media (e.g. paintings), communications technologies (telegraphs and telephones) or symbolic codes (money) — through these constellations, we can investigate how literature defines its aesthetic self-understanding and its own communicative power.

Taught in German. Readings available in German and English.