Jens Kirk Dept. of Languages and Culture Love Stories: The Discourses of Desire in Literature and Culture, 1800 – the Present Session One

Jens KirkDept. of Languages and Culture Agenda  Introduction: the Aims and Purposes of the Seminar  Loving, Telling, and Reading with Special Reference to John Keats  Romanticism  Theorising Love Stories: Catherine Belsey, ”Reading Love Stories”

Jens KirkDept. of Languages and Culture Introduction: the Aims and Purposes of the Seminar  1st and 2nd semesters: the analysis and history of texts  3rd and 4th semesters: literary theory and methodology  4th semester: seminars  4th semester: literary and media studies project

Jens KirkDept. of Languages and Culture Introduction: the Aims and Purposes of the Seminar  Texts – the analysis, history, and theory of a ”genre” – the love story – across the media and genres, but focussing on narrative and writing  Culture(s) – the idea of love across cultural and historical periods: Romanticism, Victorianism, Modernism, Postmodernism  The Programme: gsmappe/lovestories08/programme.htm

Jens KirkDept. of Languages and Culture What is love and what is story?  Tristan and Isolde  Romeo and Juliet  Other examples of great couples?  What does this suggest about love and story?

Jens KirkDept. of Languages and Culture John Keats and Fanny Brawne

Jens KirkDept. of Languages and Culture Loving, Telling, and Reading with Special Reference to John Keats’ ”To Fanny Brawne” ”You cannot conceive how I ache to be with you: how I would die for one hour – for what is in the world? I say you cannot conceive; it is impossible you should look with such eyes upon me as I have upon you: it cannot be” (NE2 : 900/ 952)

Jens KirkDept. of Languages and Culture … ”To Fanny Brawne”  Love = the lover’s desire for unity with his beloved  Love = the lover’s knowledge that unity is impossible  lack of feeling of reciprocity  Lover not a worthy love object: ”I cannot be admired, I am not a thing to be admired  Love creates its own obstacles: Venus

Jens KirkDept. of Languages and Culture Loving with Special Reference to John Keats’ ”La Belle Dame Sans Merci”  Unification revisited: What happens to the knight?

Jens KirkDept. of Languages and Culture Loving, Telling, and Reading with Special Reference to John Keats’ ”La Belle Dame Sans Merci”  The frame story: the knight and his interlocutor  The framed story: the knight and the lady  The poem and its reader: the literary ballad

Jens KirkDept. of Languages and Culture

Jens KirkDept. of Languages and Culture