The group of painters and poets known as the Pre-Raphaelites derive their name from the fact that they rejected the style of painting associated with the Italian school of the Raphaelites. Instead, they championed certain artists who had gone before Raphael and whom they found less conventional in approach. Working in the mid-nineteenth century, the Pre-Raphaelites give expression to the contradictions that existed in Victorian Britain between a process of continuing industrialization and technological advances on the one hand and people's need for spiritual orientation in an increasingly materialized world on the other. It is characteristic of these artists that they often do not restrict themselves to one artistic discipline but are writers and painters at the same time. This holds true in particular for Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who wrote poems as companion pieces to his paintings. In this course, we will study the verbal and visual work of Rossetti and other poets from the group, familiarizing ourselves with their intricate symbolism and the ways in which they juxtapose the spiritual and the mundane.
Prerequisites:
Earning a course credit in this Proseminar presupposes that students have already taken the lecture course "Introduction to the Study of Literature" and that they attend the seminar on a regular basis.
Required reading:
Bode, Christoph (2001). Einführung in die Lyrikanalyse. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag (ISBN 3-88476-478-0).
The Pre-Raphaelites
