GERM 42.12 Fictions of Survival: Robinsonades and Adventure Stories (in English)
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This seminar follows the traces of the Robinsonade and the adventure novel. Where do the roots of such adventures lie—adventures that are experienced and capable of being told as tales? When did it become possible to turn adventures into a business or entertainment? What is an adventure to begin with? Can it be described as a form? These questions themselves show just how wide a net we have to cast if we are to apprehend something of what constitutes adventures and adventurers. This question needs to be considered in the terms of literary, cultural, and media history. With regard to adventurers (both male and female), a highly interesting question to examine is whether they consciously expose themselves to danger in order to experience an adventure or whether the adventure is the inadvertent consequence of fate or accident. The character and significance of these questions changes as they approach the present, in which the pursuit of adventure is becoming ever more widespread and its documentation includes real-time transmission almost as a matter of course.