This seminar is about narratives of crime published from the seventeenth century onwards. Much of this material is now easily available through major digital resources such as Early English Books Online, Eighteenth-Century Collections Online and the records of the Old Bailey, London’s central criminal court. In our exploration of this material and its increasing popularity, we shall work on a number of well-known major cases of the period. We shall discuss not only texts, but also images (pictorial narratives of crime, i.e. early precursors of the comic strip) and music (narratives of crime in ballads and musical drama).
Texts:
A reader will be available at the usual Copy-Shop (Reckhammerweg 4) from early September. Please start reading as soon as possible.
There will be a final exam (Abschlußklausur). |
