Introduction to Literary Studies

Gothic novel 

Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto (1764) 

the first gothic novel, therefore all later gothic novels are influenced by it 

• A person's facial features or expressions, especially when regarded as indicative of character or ethnic origin  

• The detailed study of the shape and size of the cranium as a supposed indication of character and mental abilities 

• EEBO: Early English Books Online
• ECCO: Eighteens-Century Collection Online 
• password from Nationallizenzen.de needed 

• Www.archive.org
• JSTOR 

MLA International Library 

Because interllectual property is protected by copyright (for books / in Britain: protection for 70 years after authors death) 

Concise Oxford English Dictionary 

OED (available online) 

Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary 

Bilingual dictionaries 

No. Use multiple digital resources. 

• Online bibliographies,
• Inter-library loans (Fernleihe) 
• digital archives 
• recent Ph.D. thesis on your topic

The Oxford Companion to English Literature ( as a tool to get basic information on authors and works) 

• The Oxford Companion to English Literature 
• The Oxford Dictionary National Biograpgy (ODNB) 

Tell the story of their own life. 

A.A. Milne

Samuel Beckett

Samuel Beckett wrote 'Waiting for Godot,' a famous absurdist play.

An unknown author. 

An unknown author composed the Old English epic 'Beowulf.'

Bram Stoker

Bram Stoker authored 'Dracula,' a classic vampire novel.

U- U- U- U- U-

-U -U -U -U -U

UU- UU- UU- UU- UU-

-UU -UU -UU -UU -UU

Poetry has a musical dimension because it frequently plays with sounds. In addition, poems were sung in the past because many people were unable to read and write.

ECCO: Eighteenth Century Collection Online

ODNB: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

A "Nationallizenzen" password is only available in Germany.

EEBO: Early English Books Online

Since no original manuscript of any play written by Shakespeare has survived, every printed version of them is a reconstruction. We must work with critical editions here because they provide

• a reconstruction of the text
• extensive annotations
• variant readings 

There is a narrow and. Broad definition of literature. The narrow understanding focuses on special texts of highest quality, where the canon (in the past) consisted of dead, white, male authors. The broad understanding goes beyond the old canon. The broadest understanding means any text at all. 

In our discipline, the answer to a question often consists of knowing that there is a debate about this answer and being able to position oneself in that debate.  

Wolfgang Iser's reader reception theory says that a literary text consists of gaps and blanks, which are inviting the reader to think about the text. While reading non-literary texts, the reader does not have to think and interpret.  

[The type of narrator which is used here is a homodiegetic narrator and an overt narrator. He is inside the story and tells us what the character, so himself, feels and thinks (“I was hoping to make friends soon” l. 2-3). Also, he is an overt narrator, so he refers to himself while telling the story (“I was a young man in my early twenties” l. 1-2). The narrative situation is the first person narrator, the “I-as-protagonist”, where the narrator is the central character. He knows and can talk about what he thinks and feels (“I somehow managed to really annoy my next door neighbour” (l. 3-4). But he does not know what the other characters feel, think and experience (“I still have no idea where he came from, no idea of his past, no idea how he spent his days” l. 4-5).] 

According to Genette, the narrator is a hetereodiegetic narrator as well as a covert narrator. For the hetereodiegetic you can see it with “She had been thinking all morning about how to tell her, how to put this into words [...]“ (ll. 7-8) because the narrator is outside the story and therefore it is a third-person narrative. For the covert narrator with “A hot, sunny Saturday in the city. Elizabeth Barrett was taking a walk through the park with Laura Bruce.“ (ll. 1-2) because the narrator is only reporting and not visible. According to Stanzel, this narrator is an authorial narrator. With this narrative situation, the narrator has the ability to look into all characters and read their minds as well as know everything concerning the present, the past and the future. “That is what Laura kept thinking as they were walking through the park, while Elizabeth was thinking how much she was enjoying the company of her best friend.“ (ll. 9-10) and “At the same time, just one and a half miles away, a burglar was breaking into her flat. [...]“ (ll. 11-12)]

The iambic pentameter is the most common in English -language poems because of the high number of people who could not read in the Shakespearean age and therefore it was easier to memorize it. 

Dactyl is Greek for "finger". 

EEBO: Early English Books Online 

JSTOR