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Instructors: Dr. Wolfgang Funk
Event type:
Seminar
Displayed in timetable as:
05.874.512
Credits:
8,0
Language of instruction:
Englisch
Min. | Max. participants:
- | 30
Registration group: ELC 512
Priority scheme: Senatsrichtlinie
Requirements / organisational issues:
The departure of the United Kingdom from the European Union, vulgo Brexit, is often considered to be mainly an English rather than a British issue, resulting, more than anything else, from a failure of England and the English, to define itself (cf. O’Toole). In this seminar, we will first use selected ‘highlights’ from the Leave as well as Remain campaigns to assess the veracity of this claim.
In a second step, we will then look at a variety of contemporary literary case studies (dating from before as well as after Brexit and including works of narrative fiction as well as plays, poetry and non-fiction) in order to analyse different ways of how mythological imaginations of England and Englishness are used to reflect and comment on a range of timeless as well as topical issues, not all of which are necessarily to do with Brexit.
Required Reading:
Jez Butterworth, Jerusalem (2009)
Kazuo Ishiguro, The Buried Giant (2015)
Sarah Moss, Ghost Wall (2018)
M. John Harrison, The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again (2020)
+ possibly one further text, which will be announced in due course
Recommended Background Reading:
Amy Jeffs, Storyland: A New Mythology of Britain (2021)
Michael Kenny, The Politics of English Nationhood (2014)
Krishan Kumar, The Making of English National Identity (2003)
Fintan O’Toole, Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain (2018)
Jeremy Paxman, The English: A Portrait of a Portrait (1998)
Roy Porter, Myths of the English (1992)
Michael Wood, In Search of England (2000)
A preliminary semester plan as well as additional background texts and other helpful material (hopefully including an electronic Semesterapparat) will be made available via LMS either in advance or in the course of the semester. Expect the LMS page for the course to be up and running by early April.
Note: Even though, teaching the course in presence would be great and vwery much wished for, the eventual format and schedule of the course will be decided at the beginning of April and will depend on the situation then as well as student preferences.
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