Topics in Prose Fiction: World Literature and the Art of Beginning

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.