GERST 3070 - [Challenge of Literary Language]

(LA-AS) Satisfies Option 1.

Fall or Spring. Next Offered: 2019-2020. 4 credits. Student option grading.

Prerequisite: GERST 2040, GERST 2060 or equivalent. This course may be counted towards the requirement for 3000-3209-level language in the major. Taught in German.

D. McBride.

Why do literary texts insist on bending (and even breaking) the rules that govern everyday language? Could we improve our mastery of colloquial German by accepting literature’s challenge and investigating how it manipulates language in unconventional ways? We’ll take an inductive approach to answering these questions by engaging in close and sustained textual analysis of poetry, prose, and plays that fascinate as well as frustrate. The course is designed to help you transition to advanced study in German, so we will also learn the terminology of poetics, rhetoric, and genre as we practice creating the oral and written texts (Referate und Seminararbeiten) that form the core of any seminar in Germanistik.