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Oscar Wilde's Plays
DozentIn: Dr. phil. Anja Höing, M.Ed.
Veranstaltungstyp: Seminar
Ort: 41/E07
Zeiten: Fr. 10:00 - 12:00 (wöchentlich)
Beschreibung: This is a V1 LITERARY STUDIES course, also open as the literary and cultural studies part of the I-Module.
Oscar Wilde, playwright, poet, and novelist, was one of the most famous and most controversial literary figures of his day. Even nowadays, more than a hundred years after his death, his plays, and especially his comedies, are still performed on a regular basis, not only in his native Ireland and in England, but all over the world.
In this course, we will examine Wilde’s plays Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892), A Woman of No Importance (1893), An Ideal Husband (1895) and his most famous comedy The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). Famous for their intriguing mixture of wit and social criticism, Wilde’s comedies paint a satirical picture of the fashionable circles of late Victorian London society. They highlight moral hypocrisy, question gender-related double standards and discuss political as well as social issues of Wilde’s day.
This course is for students who enjoy reading, analysing and discussing drama. General requirements are regular attendance and active participation in class, in group works and in student presentations, as well as periodic homework. A prerequisite for this course is detailed knowledge of the texts, so make sure you have read and understood the plays before term starts!
Wilde’s comedies are available in a collected edition in the Oxford World Classics series:
Oscar Wilde. The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays, edited by the renowned Wildean scholar Peter Raby. ISBN 78-0199535972. If you do not yet own another edition of the plays, please purchase this one, as there are different versions of the plays (and communication in class will be much easier if we all use the same text!).
Deadline for term paper will be August 15, 2022. In all likelihood, I will not be able to offer deadline extensions.
In order to make up for the short writing time for the term paper, I plan to speed up the course by blocking some sessions early in the term. My preferred option would be to add a “block seminar” day on Saturday, April 23 (that’s the week following the Easter break), doing four sessions on that one day. This would then give you a buffer of four weeks at the end of the term, so that you can get a headstart on your term papers..
Alternatively, we can block some sessions in May and June so that this course will run with 4 SWS during that time. Once I know who is in the course, I will run a Stud.IP questionnaire on your preferred option.
