| Lerninhalte |
In her body of work the British writer Sarah Moss locates the seemingly personal concerns and experiences of her characters within wider societal and historical contexts. By drawing connections between the personal and the political, her texts address the most pressing concerns of the present moment, including climate crisis, Brexit, the Covid pandemic, and mental health.
In this seminar we will read two of Moss’s novels. The first, Cold Earth (2010), is set against the backdrop of a fictional pandemic and follows six characters stranded on an archaeological dig in the Arctic. Building on your Grundkurs knowledge, we will discuss questions of genre, narrative structure and perspective, and practice literary analysis and interpretation. To prepare for your term paper, you will learn to juxtapose and discuss critical arguments, explore ambiguities and gaps in fictional texts, and to focus your analysis on the novels’ form rather than (just) their content. Depending on your preferences, we will then read either Summerwater (2020) or The Fell (2021), which explore themes of isolation and anxiety, guilt and responsibility, in the context of climate crisis and the Covid-pandemic, respectively.
Please make sure you have a copy of Cold Earth by week 2! Additional material will be made available on Stud.IP. |
