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Conduct books (i.e. books that explained how to do things and how to behave in accordance to one’s social position, for instance as a lady, as a gentleman, as a well-mannered child or as a servant) became very popular from the late seventeenth century on. They remained so well into the Victorian era and even beyond. In this seminar, we shall study this type of text. Conduct books and advice literature in a wider sense can be read as historical sources; they can tell us a lot about the development of gender roles or about changing attitudes to children and childhood. At the same time, the authors of such texts frequently employed strategies borrowed from literary texts such as the novel.
A reader with material from the seventeenth century to the Victorian era will be made available well in advance of the semester (available from the usual place in Reckhammerweg).
Requirements: regular attendance, reading the assigned texts, active participation, and written work according to your particular Studienordnung. As always: read, think, enjoy (!!), annotate (!) and look things up if necessary. |
