Studies in Contemporary Literature

Studies in Contemporary Literature

Affect and Expression in German Theater from the Baroque to the Postmodern
Course Number: 
227 (Combined with German 214)
Course Catalog Number: 
32480
Course Type or Level: 
Instructor: 
Niklaus Largier
Days: 
Th
Time: 
2-5
Semester: 
Location: 
282 Dwinelle

We will read key texts from the history of German theater, focusing first on the period from the Baroque to the Sturm und Drang, then on a few significant post-1945 plays. We will do so with an eye to the history of affect and expression, especially in relation to questions of performance, theatricality and melodrama. This historical focus will help us to reflect also a consideration ofon the complexity of modernist and postmodernist imperatives to dispense with bourgeois forms of subjectivity—understood as hypostases of the self and ideals of mastery or continuity. In view of recent efforts to dismantle established forms of imagining historical continuity and shifts, From that point of view, we hope to track, in the turn from the Baroque to Empfindsamkeit, to Sturm und Drang, and finally the Postwar period, alternate histories of the role of affect and affective labor in the foundations and critiques of ‘modern subjectivity.’ Literary authors will include Lohenstein, Klopstock, Lenz, Goethe, Schiller, Ingeborg Bachmann, Heiner Müller, and Elfriede Jelinek. These primary texts will be paired with Benjamin’s reflections on the Trauerspiel, Buci-Glucksmann’s reflections on the Baroque and the postmodern; excerpts from Lacan, Foucault, Barthes, and Deleuze; and recent work in affect studies.