230570 Talking of the Devil (S) (SoSe 2008)

The two basic literary texts of this seminar are Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) and James Hogg¿s The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824). Both novels belong to the Romantic subgenre of Gothic fiction, that is, they are interested in analysing the powers of the supernatural, irrational, sublime over the human psyche. As psychological case studies in narrative form, they are also narratological experiments: how does one represent the subjective suffering of a deranged fanatic's mind in a work of fiction? The theoretical focus of our discussions will consequently lie on the effects of narratological choices on characterisation, on meta-fiction and on multi-perspectivity.

Please note that The Private Memoirs, a fascinating and brilliant text, is partly written in Scottish dialect and requires a certain amount of effort from the modern, non-native reader, as does the convoluted style of Frankenstein. Annotated editions are therefore absolutely essential (see recommendations below)!

Texts:
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, or: The Modern Prometheus, ed. Marilyn Butler, Oxford UP, 1998
James Hogg, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, ed. John Carey (Oxford World¿s Classics), Oxford UP, 1999
(Both available new and secondhand from amazon.de. Also at the Bielefeld Uni bookshop.)