GER 576

Fall 2011 All Classes

All Classes

Open Seminar in German Studies

Credit: 4 hours.

Seminar in literary phenomena (such as movements, genres and forms, relations, themes and types, interdisciplinary studies, women's studies) that go beyond the confines of a particular century.

May be repeated to a maximum of 12 hours if topics vary. Prerequisite: GER 510.

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GER 576 class schedule data for fall 2011
	CRN	Type	Section	Time	Day	Location	Instructor	Section Details
	30470	Lecture-Discussion	G	3:00PM -4:50PM	W	Foreign Languages Building	Keller, M	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 08/22/11-12/07/11 Credit: 4 hours Section Info: The Oriental on the European Stage from Shakespeare to Voltaire In his pioneering study Orientalism (1978), Edward Said proposes that Orientalist tropes are to the actual Orient or Islam...as stylized costumes are to characters in a play (71). This is only one of several allusions with which the eminent postcolonial critic hints at the pivotal role theater plays for the formation of Western Orientalism. The goal of this course is to closely examine the “Oriental” as a recurring figure on the European stage from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century and as literature’s most evident incarnation of Orientalism. Does the “Oriental” express more or less the same ideas across Europe and throughout the centuries? Can we therefore speak, as Said suggests, of a uniform Western discourse on the Orient? Or do we have to differentiate our understanding of Orientalism according to the specific historical and cultural contexts in which the “Oriental” appears and if so, how? In other words, is “the Orientalist stage” in the narrow sense “a system of moral and epistemological rigor” (67) as Said claims? For our discussion of these and related questions we will greatly benefit from the international conference on “The Dialectics of Orientalism in Early Modern Europe” (http://www.earlymodernorientalism.illinois.edu/), to be held at UIUC on October 7-8, 2011. Students are expected to attend. In addition to the critical issues above, each play will also allow us to explore and compare the national traditions and aesthetic contexts in which they were created. Finally, we will seek to answer the question why some “Orientals” like Othello and Nathan the Wise became canonical figures. Texts by Shakespeare, Marlowe, Cervantes, Racine, Voltaire, and Lessing. Students will read the plays either in their original language or in English translation. Class discussion will be in English but aspects of literary and cultural translation will be an important dimension of this course. Final projects exploring the transcultural and/or translational component of Orientalism are most welcome.