Introduction to Literary Studies

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 

Due to copyright. 

OED: Oxford English Dictionary 

ECCO: Eighteenth Century Collection 

The name of out university department is “Department of Anglophone Studies“. It includes all English-speaking countries and former colonies. It is not called an English Department because the “Anglophone“ part focuses on historical as well as regional varities and English stands, as mentioned above, for the English-speaking countries as the United States or Great Britain. 

Two examples would be “Inglan is a Bitch“ by Linton Kwesi Johnson and “A Destruction of Tyme“ by Alexander Montgomerie. 

The canon in the past was dead, male and white authors but there has been a revision of the canon since the 1960s/1970s. The two main forces behind this are Feminism and Postcolonial studies. The texts Things Fall Apart (1958) and The African Writer and the English Language (1965) by Chinua Achebe for example show,  that there were also African writer present as of 1960s/1970s. 

The two basic strategies of beginning a text are “in media res“ and “ab ovo“. In media res texts there is not a real introduction because it has an immediate beginning. An ab ovo text gives you an introduction as well as important information to the reader. The strategy “in media res“ is given here in the beginning of the novel. An advantage of the strategy is that it catches the readers attention because it starts very exciting but a disadvantage would be that the reader has no clue what the text is about and becomes confused. According to Stanzel we find the authorial narrator in this text. The authorial narrator is outside the story but is able to look into the characters “And he thought: So this is my first day as a teacher.“ (ll. 12-13 and also knows everything about the past, present and future “He had no idea that, over the next weeks and months, he would live in fear of that boy.“  

The two basic strategies of beginning a text are “in media res“ and “ab ovo“. In media res texts there is not a real introduction because it has an immediate beginning. An ab ovo text gives you an introduction as well as important information to the reader. The strategy “ab ovo“ is given here in the beginning of the novel because the text starts from the very beginning and has an introduction. An advantage of the strategy is that the readers knows from the beginning what is going on and does not become confused but a disadvantage would be that it does not catch the attention of the reader because it is boring to read a text which start from the very beginning. According to Stanzel we find the first-person narrator in this text. It is the i-as-protagonist who is the central character and and who only tells about her life “My life began in a little village in the Highlands of Scotland, in the year 1730.“ (l. 1) for example or “I left our village on a fine day in October, not knowing what lay ahead.“ (l. 14). 

It is not enough to simply consult our university library because you will not everything that is available on a research topic there, other resources may have different and much more information and research available on the topic like online bibliographies, inter-library loan and digital archives. 

With an inter-library loan you can get texts etc. that are not available at our university but maybe at other (university) libraries. 

The resource is Early English Books Online, also called EEBO. 

You won’t find the full text of English and American Literatures by Michael Meyer (2011) in any of these digital resources. EEBO only focuses on texts printed up to 1700. The Oxford Companion to English Literature is about basic information of authors and their works. In ECCO you only have access to English texts printed between 1701 and 1800. ODNB publishes biographies of people of the British past and archive.org is also only for English texts printed in the 19th and early 20th centuries. 

• I am a girl with dreams that are so big

My sonnet line is not about a typical topic because sonnets are usually about love and not about a girl with big dreams. 

There is no difference between the first line of a Petrarchan sonnet and the first line of an Elizabethan sonnet. 

• Why must I miss her at this time today?

My sonnet line does not address the woman directly, it contains 10 syllables and is written in an iambic pentameter. There is no difference between the first line of a Petrarchan sonnet and the first line of an Elizabethan sonnet. 

• In older forms of English we discussed “Beowulf” and “The Ruin” both from anonymous authors. From the 20th century we discussed “Ingland is a Bitch” by Linton Kwesi Johnson. Many authors choose to write in non-standard English like Johnson because they want to make a social or political statement. Johnson wants to explains his journey of living in England and making his way there by emphasising through language that it was not easy, especially he does not come from England and is an immigrant.]
• [Beowulf by an unknown author and A Description of Tyme by Alexander Montgomerie are examples of works which were written in older forms of English and which we discussed in the lecture. An example of a text from the 20th century that is not written in contemporary standard British English would be “Inglan is a Bitch” by Linton Kwesi Johnson. Choosingnot to write in standard English could be because you want to show your version of it as Linton Johnson did, he wrote the way he spoke, which is Caribbean English to voice political protest.]
• “Beowulf” for example is written in old English, the author is unknown. “Caedmons Hymn” is also written in Old English the author is Caedmon. “A Description of Tyme” from Alexander Montgomerie is written in a Scottish variety. An example for today would be “Ingland is a Bitch” by Linton Kwesi Johnson, he chose the write it in his own form because he was an immigrant and did not feel welcomed in England, so he wanted to use his own Caribbean language. By using his own variety, he made the text political, he wanted to make a statement.]

Poetry: Linton Kwesi Johnson, „Inglan is a Bitch“ (1980); Drama: William Shakespeare, The Tempest (1623); Prose/Narrative: Bram Stoker, Dracula (1897). Stuff you learn from poetry could also be used for drama as well as narrative/prose and narrative prose and play can use language that is poetic.  

• 2 points for “who is talking to whom?” (Or a question about narrative transmission).
• 2 points for “where are we?” (Or: what is the setting in terms of place and time?)
• 2 points for “who is there?” (Or: what characters do we encounter?)
• 2 points for “what is happening? (Or: referring to story/plot).
• 2 points for “special effects?” (Or: in which ways is the language in the text structured?) 

• 1 point for “Waiting for Godot”;
• 1 point for “The Tempest”;
• 0 points for variations. 

• 1 point for Q = Quarto;
• 1 point for F = Folio;
• 0 points for variations. 

Various ways of phrasing this: e.g.:  

• 2 points for pointing out that Shakespeare’s plays have usually survived in more than one version, and that a critical edition is required because it tries to present a good reconstruction of the text.
• Or: 2 points for pointing out that a critical edition gives us annotations that help us to understand words that are no longer in use, as well as all sorts of cultural contexts of the time.