Christina Konig – författare

Seminar paper from the year 2003 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 2 (B), University of Tubingen (English Philology), course: Proseminar I: Introduction to Drama, language: English, abstract: Today almost everything is accepted in modern society. It does not matter if a person ishomosexual, bisexual or transsexual. Further, everyone can do even almost everythingthat pleases him. So, a lot of men try women the more, the more they are famous,rich or successful. And even today s women have broken free from their traditionaltasks: raising a family, staying at home and doing the cooking. Instead, it is fashion tolive a man s life: going to parties, having a lot of affairs and neglecting the morals. Today s women are as bad as their masculine fellow men. And even they have becomeworse- if you want to believe in what the older generation says about our youth. Maybe,this is true. If you compare it to the Victorian Age, so much seems to have changed. Thinking of Oscar Wilde, you will soon realise that he could have lived a much easierlife in today s world. He was an enfant terrible of his time. Not only that his artisticand theatrical views did not fit into society at all, but it were especially his sexualpreferences that caused his main problems. In contrast to the latest tendency of acceptancefor homosexuality, it was a real crime about the year 1900 and so he had to spenda certain time in prison. The double life that it entailed was by no means a simple matterof deceit and guilt for Wilde: it suited the cultivation of moral independence and detachmentfrom society that he considered essential to art. 1(Small:1999,xiv/xv). Withhis behaviour he offended the leaders, institutions and press of his Philistine country. Yet, he always tried to be accepted by Society, but his attempts were mostly answeredwith exclusion.As Wilde lived for art, his works are a mirror of his own disappointmentand frustration about the contemporary value system. So it is certainly very interestingto examine his play Lady Windermere s Fan in regard to social and moral views. 1 Ian Small, Introduction, Ian Small (ed.), Lady Windermere s Fan. A Play About a Good Woman(London: New Mermaids,1999) xiv/xv.

Seminar paper from the year 2003 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 2 (B), University of Tubingen (English Philology), course: Proseminar II Literatur: Heart of Darkness and its Transformations, language: English, abstract: The following essay will deal with the question whether or not Joseph Conrad's Heart ofDarkness is a racist text. This question comes up because this novel was written during the age of Victoria, a time ofimperialism and colonialism where the term race changed its meaning and became amonolithic factor. The term race was first used in English literature as denoting a class of people, evena family. In eighteen-century usage it was possible to speak of a race of animals orbirds. By the nineteenth century this imprecision was fully recognized, and it wassuggested that the term was purely subjective, and illuminated the opinion of theinvestigator rather than the object of investigation. (1Bolt: 1971, ix). So from then on, racism, which can be defined as the belief that races have distinctive culturalcharacteristics determined by hereditary factors and that this endows some races withan intrinsic superiority over others (2Wehmeier:2000,1042) was often included or propagatedin literary works. As Conrad was a member of the Victorian society it is interesting for today s readers toexamine if he also shared this belief. Furthermore, it has recently (i.e. within the last twentyfiveyears) been a frequently-discussed topic, because Chinua Achebe, the famous Nigerianauthor, arose this question. So, first of all, his accusations will be looked at more clearly, in the following, it is to beregarded if these are actually true, and finally, one will see, if a final estimation is possible. 1 Christine Bolt, Victorian Attitudes to Race (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971) ix. 2 Sally Wehmeier (ed.) Oxford Advanced Learner s Dictionary of Current English,6th ed. (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 2000) 1042.