Resistance – whether against an unjust law, an oppressive structure, or
social expectations – has always been one of the driving forces of
literature. Novels, poems and plays thrive on resistance, evoking the
forces that act upon us only to celebrate the counterforce that can be
found in individual and social agency. In this seminar, we will
investigate the role of resistance in the creation, reception, and wider
impact of literature, while looking at some of the milestones of
anglophone resistance literature, from John Milton’s justification of
regicide through the invention of civil disobedience by Percy Shelley
and Henry David Thoreau and the more nihilistic denial of Melville’s
Bartleby (”I’d prefer not to.”) all the way to civil rights struggles,
rebellious children and angry young men turned terrorist.
- Dozent/in: Sebastian Domsch