Course for international guest/part time students
- Faculty
- Faculty of Humanities
- Organization
- BTK Department of English Studies
- Code
- BMI-ANGD17-CI12aE.10
- Title
- Elective CI Specialisation Seminar - Foundations and Perspectives: Tell Me Yer Story: Self and Narrative
- Usual semester
- Spring
- Published semester
- 2026/27/1
- ECTS
- 3
- Language
- en
- Learning outcomes
- This course uses the concept of narrative identity elaborated in the philosophy of Alasdair MacIntyre and Paul Ricoeur and looks at the various difficulties that present themselves when it is applied to literary analysis. The approach to these questions is interdisciplinary, as in the analysis of literary texts philosophical and psychological accounts of selfhood are taken on board from Ricoeur to Tengelyi and from Freud to Jung and Deleuze. Along with analysing and discussing a wide range of texts, including dramas, short stories and (excerpts from) novels, it raises students’ awareness of the complex relationship between self and narrative.
- Course content
- The seminars provide a platform for the open discussion of literary texts the students have to read in advance. We debate various possible interpretations in the course of which we pay special attention to the intricate relationship between selfhood and narrative. In these discussions we resort to pertaining questions of philosophy as well as psychology and literary theory.
- Assessment method
- Assessment is based on attendance, oral presentation and participation in class discussions.
- Bibliography
- Texts discussed in the course: --Jean Rhys, (excerpts from) Wide Sargasso Sea --Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet --J. Coetzee, Foe --George Orwell, ‘Shooting an Elephant’ --Edgar Allan Poe, ‘William Wilson’ --Henry James, In the Cage --James Joyce, Ulysses (excerpts) and ‘Eveline’ --Shakespeare, Coriolanus --Samuel Beckett, Happy Days --W. H. Auden, ‘Their Lonely Betters’ --Cary Churchill, A Number