GERST 4100 - The Seminar

(ALC-AS, LA-AS) Satisfies Option 1.      

The Poem: History, Medium, Form

This course examines the poem as a particular linguistic form with its own history. It includes a concise overview of the history of German lyric poetry. To venture an answer to the question of what poetry/what the poem is, we will read and listen to poems from all periods of German literary history (in addition to books and printed texts, the poems will be accessible as sound files; we will also read poems aloud and examine sound pattern, rhythm, and their hermeneutic and non-hermeneutic consequences in detail). Our modes of listening and reading will be determined by the demands of the poems themselves. What does it take to “get” a poem (which is not necessarily the same thing as to “understand” it)? What is the mode of a poem’s presence? How does lyric poetry as a genre (including the history of its forms) and its individual instances relate to language? How does the genre of the lyric relate to “das Lyrische” (Emil Staiger)?

We will discuss the poetic conventions that prevailed during specific epochs and the typical forms that emerged in consequence. These investigations will help us develop a working definition of the lyric as opposed to epic and dramatic forms. Taking our departure from concrete encounters with particular poems, we will analyze how poems address their readers. Moreover, we will pose the question of whether a poem says or shows something that could not be said or shown in prose? And if so, what that “something” might be. In addition to poetry, we will also read theoretical texts that offer a variety of approaches to poetry and the poetic (e.g., Heidegger, Adorno, Staiger, Hamburger, Agamben, Derrida, Gumbrecht).