Fall 2025 | Princeton University
The beginning of a story or a novel marks a delicate threshold. It signifies both the entrance into a fictitious world and the advent of a new order. Narrative openings not only determine a story's further course and continuation, they also offer fundamental insights into the logic of narration as such. In order to address all of these questions properly, a selection of canonical works of German and European literature will be the basis of discussion.
General
Readings
Beginning of Beginnings
[\o] Genesis (Gen 1–3)
[\a] Immanuel Kant, Mutmaßlicher Anfang der Menschengeschichte (1786)
Beginning and Crisis
[\o] Homer, Ilias (first song)
[\c] Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Die Wahlverwandtschaften. Ein Roman (1809; first chapter)
Ab Ovo (From the Beginning)
[\o] Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (vol. 1, 1759; chapters 1–9)
[\o] Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Aus meinem Leben. Dichtung und Wahrheit (1811; Erster Teil / Erstes Buch)
Uncanny Beginning
[\a] E. T. A. Hoffmann, Der Sandmann (1816)
[\o] Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818/1831)
Beginning of Modernity
[\o] Thomas Mann, Der Zauberberg (1926; “Vorsatz,” “Erstes Kapitel: Ankunft”)
[\c] Robert Musil, Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften (1930; „Erster Teil: Eine Art Einleitung“, Erstes Kapitel: „Woraus bemerkenswerter Weise nichts hervorgeht“)