Ankündigung: Flaubert and Courbet / Flaubert, literature and politics
Vortrag und Blockseminar im Sommersemester 2010 mit Jacques Rancière, Thomas Schestag und Barbara Vinken.
Das Flaubert-Zentrum lädt ein:
Am 27. Mai 2010 wird Jacques Rancière einen Vortrag zum Thema "The Time of the Plebeian: Literature, Politics and Temporality" halten.
Beginn: 18.00h c.t. im Senatssaal der LMU München.
Am 28./29. Mai 2010 findet im Rahmen des Flaubert-Zentrums ein Blockseminar zum Thema "Flaubert and Courbet / Flaubert, literature and politics" statt.
Ort: Französische Bibliothek, Ludwigstr. 25 jeweils von 9.00 bis 17.00 Uhr.
Vorbesprechung: 28.04., R211, 12h c.t. bis 14h.
Gustave Flaubert and Gustave Courbet are great contemporaries whose respective achievements – whose visions of reality and of their respective arts – have more in common than has usually been recognized. The first part of the class (with Michael Fried) will try to support this claim with close readings of pictures and texts. Special emphasis will fall on Flaubert's Madame Bovary and on Courbet's self-portraits and his Realist paintings of 1848-55.
Unlike the literary critics of the 20th century, who denounced the Flaubertian conception of art as religion because of its aristocratic character, Flaubert's contemporaries instantly identified the literary emergence of Madame Bovary with the political emergence of democracy, i. e. a democracy which is not conceived of as political regime or doctrine but as a specific form sensitive to equality. The aim of the second part of the class (with Jacques Rancière) is to develop an understanding of how it was possible for the conception of literary style as a "manière absolue de voir les choses" to coincide with a redistribution of different forms of sensual experience, enabling everybody to feel any kind of sensation or aspiration. By confronting the Flaubertian connection of literature and democracy with literary forms and figures as well as with significant modes of interpretation, these questions will be put into a larger context: What sort of equality does literature share with the forms of experience it describes? By which forms of diversity or inequality does it distinguish itself? What is their connection to the equality and inequality of political action on the one hand and to that of the social sciences on the other?
Das Seminar findet auf Englisch statt. Es gliedert sich in zwei Teile, die für den Erwerb eines Scheins beide Pflicht sind, sonst aber auch selbstverständlich einzeln besucht werden können. Anforderungen für den Scheinerwerb sind ferner die Übernahme eines Referates sowie die Abfassung einer Hausarbeit.
Anmeldung telefonisch oder per Mail im Sekretariat Prof. Vinken (Tel. 2180-3531, sekretariat.vinken@romanistik.uni-muenchen.de).
Nachtrag: Da der Seminarteil von Michael Fried leider entfallen muss, wird am 04-06.10.2010 Thomas Schestag ein Seminar zum Thema "Flaubert und Proust" abhalten.
