Culture in Literature and Literature in Culture in the Germanistic Training in Literature – Analysis of a Case from Teaching Practice

Abstract

Building upon the current culturological and literary didactic discourse, this paper analyses the cultural knowledge implicated in the chosen literary texts and explicitly located in students’ essays. Since the culturological research treats individuals acting as subjects, and therefore responsible for interpreting and creating their actions, the qualitative methodology is applied and the scientific design of document analysis. The sample consists of the final year students (2020/2021) academic year of the Department of German Studies of the Faculty of Philology and Arts of the University of Kragujevac. It is postulated that the students do not possess adequate cultural and culturological knowledge of the divided Germany, that their critical and self-critical social consciousness is not fully developed, and that this will impede the understanding of the literary texts. Starting from the research questions: what is the extent of the students’ command of the cultural interpretive patterns from the period of the German Democratic Republic and immediately after the German unification, and do they perform the literary, culturological, and cultural competences needed for the understanding of novels and their independent interpretation, the following aims were established: enabling the students to identify cultural knowledge in literary texts; enabling the students for independent, grounded, critical, and self-critical reading and interpretation of the texts and cultural patterns therein, as well as the development of awareness of social-political engagement and the need for social-political critique of their own and the target culture society. On the base of categorisation and sub-categorisation of cultural patterns, as well as the reflections on literary texts derived from the analysis of students’ essays, the conclusion has been reached that the suggested didactic model corresponds to the established aims, and that, since it is derived directly from the teaching practice, it can be considered as a modest contribution to its advancement.