City and Literature
Summary
This course aims to approach the imagery of the city in modern and contemporary narrative, focusing on literature written in German. It studies different literary representations of the city, its inhabitants, and the way they interact based on social conventions and rules, paying special attention to the construction of identities and the unappealable mark of individual identity in key historical events of the 19th, 20th and 21st century.
What Do We Study
- Semiotics of the city: construction and representations of modern city imagery.
- The narrative of the city I: society and construction of cultural identities.
- Literary representations of the city and its society: spaces and interaction, materiality and power, beauty and fragility, irony, and satire.
- The narrative of the city II: history and alienation of individual identities.
- Literary representations of the city and history: role and loss of identity, survival and temporality, corporeality and erotism, art and globalization.
Which is the Line of Thought
Taking as a starting point the essays of Georg Simmel, Siegfried Kracauer, Walter Benjamin and Max Weber about the modern city and the interaction of its inhabitants in the urban context, we discuss a selection of historic and contemporary literary texts from different cultural contexts, with special emphasis on texts written in German.
Theoretical and Practical Approaches
Benjamin, Walter. Obras. Abada, 2006.
Kracauer, Siegfried. Los empleados. Gedisa, 2007.
Simmel, Georg. “Las grandes ciudades y la vida del espíritu.” Cuadernos políticos, no. 45, 1986, p. 5-10.
Weber, Max. La ciudad. Ed. de la Piqueta, 1987.