Kohlmann, Benjamin

Free thinker, iconoclast, visionary: D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930) is one of
the most significant and innovative voices in British literary history. Compulsively
readable, he is also unlike any other writer you’ve come across. This class
will explore a representative cross-section of Lawrence’s short stories,
essays, travel writing, poetry, and novels—and we will place these texts in
dialogue with their contemporary (cultural, social, political) contexts. For
Lawrence, the activities of writing, thinking, and living were inseparable, and
we will accordingly examine these three aspects of Lawrence’s identity
alongside one another. In doing so, we will discuss the broader literary and
cultural transition in the decades around 1900 from late Victorian into modern,
and from realism into modernism. We will also explore a small selection of
criticism about Lawrence, which considers his interest in environmentalism,
indigeneity, feminism, and cross-media artistic experimentation.

This lecture course offers an overview of the literary history of the British Isles from the Anglo-Saxon period to the present day. We will focus on the development of literary forms and genres, as well as on the emergence of new sets of thematic concerns from one (literary) period to the next. Attention will also be paid to literature's interactions with, responses to, and influences on its surrounding socio-cultural contexts. The lecture course is an obligatory part of the “Basismodul Literaturwissenschaft” and hence is aimed at beginners. Course materials (including short readers) will be made available electronically and uploaded to GRIPS.  Note: This course cannot be taken as part of the MA British Studies. If the lecture is an obligatory part of the “Basismodul Literaturwissenschaft” in your course of studies, it cannot be taken for a different module.

Critical and annotated versions of the texts discussed in the lecture course can be found in the The Norton Anthology of English Literature (vols.1+2). It is recommended (though by no means mandatory) that you buy this anthology for our course. The two volumes will also come in handy during your future university studies. Since the Norton Anthology isn’t cheap (and not all students may decide to buy a copy), the essential readings for each week will also be uploaded to GRIPS.