This seminar will examine recent efforts to introduce systems-theoretical concepts in literary studies. The aim of the seminar is to develop a critical understanding of the basic conceptual repertoire of systems theory and to chart its potential as an instrument for literary studies. This seminar will examine the international discussion in aesthetic theory prior to Kant. Authors to be examined include Gottsched, Breitinger, Baumgarten, Mendelssohn, Smith, Harris, Burke, DuBos, and Diderot. I, II Investigation of the relationship between specific poetic and aesthetic projects and poetic praxis with emphasis on poets such as Holderlin, Rilke, Celan, and others where the poetic praxis is especially strongly linked to the articulation of poetics.
Purpose is to explore affinities and differences between philosophical and literary texts.
2 hours 090.737 Classicism I The formation and aesthetics of classicism are investigated in a comparative confrontation of German classicism with French classicism in terms of an aesthetic of restraint. A comparative and contrastive reading, concentrating particularly on Goethe and Racine, will pursue these relations in detail. In this seminar the emphasis will be on the aesthetics of the sublime, where restraint and pathos seem to merge in an uneasy tension. Readings will include Kant, Schiller, and Goethe. This seminar will examine the narratological, historical, and ideological dimensions of stories that purport to relate an origin, the emergence of a new and qualitatively different order from what, if anything, preceded.