GERMAN LITERATURE 2

The module is taught as a core course in the Master’s degree programme in European, American and Postcolonial Language and Literature (60 hours lesson time and 12 CP). It shares the general objectives of the mentioned Master's degree programme within the area of German Literature and its analysis and interpretation.

To meet the objective of bringing students to an advanced level of German language and skills of analysis and interpretation, the course will be taught in German with brief comments and explanations in Italian where necessary or requested.

Students who choose to follow the course as an optional subject and students who take part in the Erasmus programme are requested to contact the course instructor to ascertain they have the necessary language and literary competences.

The course wishes to obtain the follwing results:

- intensive study of chosen works representing different genres

- development of the critical and expository skills needed to discuss and analyse literary texts

- acquisition of meta-theoretical notions concerning the relationship between literature and historical and political contexts

- acquisition of comparative intercultural notions and awareness through outcomes achieved in a European literary prospective

- improvement of language skills (towards levels C1/C2 on the CEFR) and skills of bibliographic research

- ability to translate into Italian extracts from literary texts and to reflect on the translation process

- improvement of the ability to evaluate differing interpretative approaches and to formulate personal and effective hypotheses and judgements and to express them publicly, arguing a personal position

- development of the capacity to project and to map out a process of text analysis and to elaborate autonomously short presentations and papers

- ability to interact in interuniversity and international contexts through meetings with German-speaking students and researchers

- continued consolidation of the ability to select and utilize electronic sources and resources in German autonomously, and introduction to the ability to plan and carry out scientific work required in the various phases of the degree course, and the final thesis in particular.

It will therefore be possible to develop an effective awareness of the functioning and structure of a literary text and the direct ability to identify the critical mechanisms functional to its interpretation.

Bachelor’s degree (triennale) and number of credits of German Language and Literature following the access guidelines established by the Master’s degree programme in European, American and Postcolonial Language and Literature (LLEAP).

All students are to have the language and analytical skills necessary to cope autonomously with the reading and semantic analysis of texts in German (at the C1/C2 level of the CEFR). They are also required to prepare a written paper of ca.10 pages and ca. 20-minute oral presentations in German on a topic related to the course programme. Students are also required to have the communicative and conversational skills necessary to take an active role in scientific debate.

Students who choose to follow the course as an optional subject and students who take part in the Erasmus programme are kindly requested to contact the course instructor to ascertain they have the necessary language and literary competences for the course and the coursework.

Corse title: "Hölderlins Welt"

In 2020 we were celebrating the 250th anniversary of Friedrich Hölderlin, one of Germany’s most outstanding poets ever. Unfortunately, many of the planned initiatives had to be postponed, so the course on offer will attempt to take up the broad international scientific discourse around this fascinating author’s work both in the context of his own time and also in the present day.

Lived in a historical-political climate of great changes and conflicts, Hölderlin particularly attracts because his biographical and artistic figure not only allows a profound and complex approach to German cultural scenery of the era around 1800 but also opens wide horizons to understanding the scope of literature in general. Hölderlin's texts - which were not very well known at the time - are often still considered hermetic and difficult to understand. Nonetheless, the late echo of his works has been surprising and suggests an unusual topicality of the problems faced by the poet with completely unique and innovative intellectual and artistic strategies.

The course aims to address some of the crucial issues in the analysis of Hoelderlin's texts (such as man's relationship to nature, the problematics of belonging and alienation, the dynamics of conflict and peace and the interrelation between identity and interculturality), outlining above all the literary-cultural context of the times in an intertextual perspective in order to offer students a hermeneutic key that makes it possible to glimpse how much literature is capable of transcending limits of space and time when entering a true and in-depth dialogue with it.

Primary literature (set):

Friedrich Hölderlin:
- Urteil und Sein
- Reflexionen
- Über Religion
- Das älteste Systemprogramm des deutschen Idealismus (ohne Verfasserangaben)
- Hyperion oder Der Eremit in Griechenland (Die letzte Fassung, Fragment von Hyperion, Hyperions Jugend, Die vorletzte Fassung)
- Der Tod des Empedokles (Frankfurter Plan, zweite und dritte Fassung)
- Über das Tragische (mit dem Grund zum Empedokles)
- Das untergehende Vaterland … (Das Werden im Vergehen)
- Anmerkungen zum Ödipus
- Anmerkungen zur Antigonä
- Anmerkungen zu den Pindar-Fragmenten

- Gedichte:
- Hymne an die Göttin der Harmonie (1790/91)
- Der Gott der Jugend (1794/1795)
- Der Jüngling an die klugen Ratgeber (1797)
- Die Völker schwiegen, schlummerten … (1797)
- Da ich ein Knabe war (1798)
- Abendphantasie (1799)
- Wie wenn am Feiertage (1799/1800)
- An Landauer (1800)
- Lebenslauf (1800)
- Menons Klagen um Diotima (1800)
- Natur und Kunst oder Saturn und Jupiter (1800)
- Der Rhein (1801)
- Germanien (1801)
- Friedensfeier (1801 entworfen; 1802)
- Der Einzige (2 Fassungen, entworfen wahrscheinlich ab 1801)
- Andenken (wahrscheinlich 1803)
- Hälfte des Lebens (1803)
- Mnemosyne (3 Fassungen; 1803)
- „Turmgedichte“ (ab 1806): Freundschaft / Aussicht / Höheres Leben / Höhere Menschheit / Die Zufriedenheit / An Zimmern

Hölderlin's texts can be found also on-line (http://www.wlb-stuttgart.de/sammlungen/hoelderlin-archiv/sammlung-digital/zur-stuttgarter-hoelderlin-ausgabe-online/ ). They are also available in Italian translation in the edition edited by Luigi Reitani as part of the Collana "I Meridiani" - Mondadori.

Further primary literature (optional):

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:
- Die Leider des jungen Werthers
- Iphigenie auf Tauris

Friedrich Gottlob Klopstock:
Die Frühlingsfeier

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing:
Nathan der Weise

Friedrich Schiller:
- An die Freude
- Die Götter Griechenlands
- Die Künstler
- Die Räuber
- Don Karlos, Infant von Spanien
- Über Bürgers Gedichte
- Über naive und sentimentalische Dichtung
- Über das Erhabene
- Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen, in einer Reihe von Briefen

Secondary literature (recommended):

Jürgen K. Hultenreich: Hölderlin - das halbe Leben. Edition A. B. Fischer: Berlin 2018

Johann Kreuzer (Hg.): Hölderlin-Handbuch: Leben - Werk - Wirkung. J.B. Metzler: Stuttgart 2020

Ulrich Gaier: Hölderlin. Eine Einführung. UTB: Tübingen, Basel 1993

Ulrich Gaier, Valérie Lawitschka, Stefan Metzger, Wolfgang Rapp, Violetta Waibel u.a. (Hgg.): Hölderlin-Texturen 1.1. - 5.1.: Hölderlin-Gesellschaft: Tübingen / Deutsche Schillergesellschaft: Marbach 1995 ff.

Rüdiger Safranski, Hölderlin. Komm! ins Offene, Freund! Hanser: München 2019

For study-purposes students can refer to translations of the texts, meanwhile at the examination are admitted only the original versions in german language. Further bibliographical explanations and indications will be given during the course.

In preparation for and during the exam, all students will be required:

1) to be familiar with the chosen texts and to be able to translate into Italian a piece from one of those texts;

2) to be able to discuss the cultural and historical contexts of the works being examined;

3) to be conversant with the textual tools to be able first to comment on both the content and formal aspects, in order finally to present competently their own personal opinions;

4) to be able to make use of the critical tools of analysis when discussing the texts in the original;

and 5) to write a scientific paper and to present oral critical analyses in German on particular texts from a selection covered during the course. The presentations as well as the paper, first agreed upon, will require a bibliographic study and a scholarly review of the different critical ideas encountered in the literary criticism.

An integral part of the learning assessment is the writing of concise summaries of the lectures given at an international conference entitled "Wir sind nichts; was wir suchen, ist alles. Hölderlin zum 250. Geburtstag" organised for 27 and 28 October 2021 (approx. 10 pages in total, written in German). The papers must be handed in at least two weeks before the chosen examination date. The approximately 30 minute-oral examination is divided into two parts, the first part of about 10 minutes and the second part of about 20 minutes. The first part will be dedicated to a discussion of the texts submitted. In the second part, a passage from one of the texts analysed in the presentations will be translated and commented on. Finally, the student will have to answer specific questions and discuss the theses proposed by the teacher during the colloquium with reference to one or more of the topics covered during the course. The exame will be held in German.

Front lectures with seminarial elements (presentations and class discussion); additional support material; supplementary multi-medial activities.

At the beginning of classes, students are advised to print out this programme and bring it with them. It will be discussed and explained in detail by the lecturer. The topics of the lessons will be presented together with the order in which the texts will be dealt with and discussed.
Other informations will be communicated during the module and/or in internet. For further information contact the professor.

oral

This subject deals with topics related to the macro-area "Human capital, health, education" and contributes to the achievement of one or more goals of U. N. Agenda for Sustainable Development