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• The student has a thorough knowledge of the various models of subjectivity and how they are reflected in the literature of the 18th to 21st centuries.
• The student is familiar with important genres representing subjectivity, such as the novel, the essay, and short fiction as they appear and change from the 18th century to the 21st century.
• The student can communicate orally and in written form about these issues in an academic i.e. critical and comparative manner.
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This overview course is focused on a specific problem: subjectivity, as represented in modern literature. What is a modern 'subject' and how is the subject designed or deconstructed in literary history from the nineteenth century? How does literature contribute to the development of the modern subject in Europe? Modern literary subjectivity from the 18th-21st century will be analysed through a number of key texts, in different languages and across different literary periods. Through study of the genres discussed, and study of the changing role of 'subjectivity' in these genres, students gain insight into the history of literature: how does subjectivity change from the eighteenth century, how do genres such as the novel become key carriers of certain models of subjectivity? What is the relationship between subjectivity and humanism and how has this relationship been problematized over the period covered? How have the repeated 'crises' of the subject (e.g. after the Second World War) influenced the development of Western literature? What new, networked genres and subjects arise at the end of the twentieth century? These are some of the questions we shall seek answers to, reading texts such as Rousseau's 'Rêveries du Promeneur Solitaire', Kafka's 'Die Verwandlung', and Woolf's 'Mrs Dalloway.'
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