A DISCURSIVE APPROACH TO TEACHING GERMAN LITERATURE ON THE EXAMPLE OF THE NOVEL BRICKS AND MORTAR BY CLEMENS MEYER

Abstract

The presented qualitative content analysis in this paper refers to the aspirations of modern didactics of foreign literature towards discursive, multimedia and constructive approaches to literary texts. The criteria for the selection of literary texts in teaching point to the fact that the novel ʻBricks and Mortarʼ by Clemens Meyer is an adequate choice for university literature teaching, both for the analysis of the discourse and for achieving the set teaching goals. The main figures in the novel belong to the milieu of prostitution, shown both from the point of view of women and from the point of view of pimps. The internal monologues, the flow of thoughts and the dizzying change of the narrative perspective enable a detailed psychological picture of the characters and the impossibility of dividing them into ʻgoodʼ and ʻevilʼ. What is ʻevilʼ is woven into modern society where the only God is – money. The applied qualitative methodology deals with a case study, which is composed by fourth year students of German Studies at the Faculty of Philology and Arts of the University of Kragujevac. The presented classes were held in the summer semester of the academic year 2021/2022. The goals of the class are strengthening the existing literary competences and acquiring new literary competences, especially the competence of independent reading, independent individual understanding of the text, independent decision-making about the literary value of the literary text and conscious acceptance of the ambiguity of the text. Special attention is drawn to the conscious mastery of discursive comments. The main discourses of the novel are sex, power, prostitution and money. These topcis were broken down by students into subtopics, presented in multimedia presentations. In the conversation after (Anschlussgespräch), an attempt was made to transfer the fictitious world of the book to the so-called ʻrealʼ world that surrounds us. The respondents showed a high level of literary and life knowledge at their disposal. It is believed that mastering the aforementioned competencies is essential for future German as a foreign language teachers. It enables them not only to independently choose literary texts, goals and methods in their own teaching, but also to teach and transfer discursive competences to their students, thereby educating them in a humanistic and democratic spirit.