Post‐War Humor in the Upper‐Division German Literature Classroom

Abstract

A motivational survey conducted in the De partment of Germanic Languages and Literatures at Washington University in St. Louis in the fall of 2004 found that 60.5% of students in beginning, intermediate and advanced German dasses con sidered literature to be an important component of their German instruction.1 While this percentage has certainly fluctuated during the years in which this survey has been administered [2002-2006], the relative consistency of the student response to the inclusion of literature testifies to the value stu dents place on literature for language acquisition. But how this interest can best be nurtured and en couraged to develop and how it may best serve the related but unique goal of language acquisition is open to widespread interpretation in light of the various obstacles faced on all levels of foreign lan guage courses. In order to provide sufficient enter tainment value to maintain student engagement and tempt students to examine German cultural expression from a lighter angle, an upper-division German literature course was designed to focus on humor. Along with this heightened entertainment value unfortunately can come a heightened level of difficulty of comprehension, which often makes foreign-language humor appear too daunting, and therefore an undesirable task. Despite the difficulty of comprehending humor in second language literature, it was nonetheless selected as the organizing principle for an upper division course on German literature-German 4104-in the Spring semesters of 2003 and 2006, Studies in Genre: In Search of German Humor.2 Because it was felt that humor offers such unique insights into German history, culture and psychol ogy, it is too precious a resource to be rejected as a topic of discussion due to the level of difficulty, without adequate effort exerted toward its integra tion. Furthermore, humor has been attributed with the accomplishment of four main interactional tasks: [creating] affiliation and [strengthening] bonds between people, [... providing] a means of expressing negative feelings indirectly, [... en abling the] display and [negotiation of] both indi vidual and group identity and [... serving] as a means of protecting one's positive face (Bell 26-27). The goals for this course, which drew its numbers from advanced sophomores, juniors and seniors, were to investigate the nature, purposes and audiences of various genres of German hu mor, as well as to continue practice of the German language with special emphasis upon writing. Our area of study ranged from some of the earliest in carnations of humor in the Schwanke of der Stricker in the thirteenth century to the eth nic-comedy concept of 21st-century comedian, Kaya Yanar-a German of Turkish-Arabic descent -with every endeavor made to quash assertions of the Germans as a humorless people. The focus of this arficle is on the latter portion of the course