GERST 6070 - [Prose of the World: 19th C. Letters]

(crosslisted) COML 6894, ROMS 6070

Fall or Spring. Next Offered: 2020-2021. 4 credits. Student option grading.

Anchor course. Taught in English. All texts available in English.

P. Fleming.

This seminar takes as its theoretical starting point Hegel’s notion of the “prose of the world” to describe the modern age, and the 19th c in particular—an age no longer defined by the exception and heroes, but by the ascent of the average man, market forces, efficiency, industriousness, usefulness, and the regular rhythms of bureaucratic life and institutions. In opposition to the poetic-heroic, one now has the prosaic-common giving form to life’s expression. We will explore theoretical investigations of “the prose of the world” (e.g., Moretti, Lukacs, Auerbach), the rise of social statistics, and crucial novels and novellas of the 19th c by authors such as Keller, Stifter, and Fontane in the European context of Dickens, Balzac and Flaubert.