From the medieval tales of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table to the desert island romances of the Enlightenment, from the works of James Fenimore Cooper, Eugène Sue, Karl May and Robert Louis Stevenson to the bestsellers from the pens of B.Traven and J.R.R. Tolkien and their successors on the contemporary scene, the adventure story has retained its position as one of literature's enduring modes of story-telling. Clearly, it still serves to assuage feelings of deep yearning in today's readers.
In this series of lectures, four of the most significant authors of contemporary German fiction consider the nature of the genre.
From James Fenimore Cooper's 'noble savage' to Stefan Zweig's 'stolid yellow creature', encounters with the Other have been characterized by perceptions dictated by admiration, contempt, erotic desire, conflict or ideology. But they are never conclusive and always worthy of the author's attention. In his own books, Sherko Fatah has long been fascinated by such meetings. In novels such as Im Grenzland ("On the Frontier", 2001), Das dunkle Schiff? ("The Dark Ship?", 2008; both published by Jung und Jung) and Schwarzer September ("Black September", 2019, Luchterhand), he transports his readers to the Near East, to countries and ways of life that are anything but close to us.
Moderator: Prof. Dr. Susanne Lüdemann, Institute of German Philology, LMU
Organization: This lecture series is organized by the DFG Research Unit on "The Philology of the Adventure Story" at LMU's Institute of Comparative Literature, in collaboration with the Literaturhaus München.
Registration and costs
All lectures will be streamed. Tickets cost 5 euros (plus 2 euros service charge) and are available via Reservix. For further details, see the following website: Literaturhaus München. This lecture will be given in German.