Bøger af Dorothea Wolschak

Seminar paper from the year 2013 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 2,0, Catholic University Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, language: English, abstract: Once upon a time ¿ 200 years ago to be precise ¿ two brothers put down a collection of previously orally bequeathed wondrous and fantastic stories that would continue to amaze children and adults all over the world. These so-called folktales or fairy tales with their simple stories, magical characters and educational morals fascinated people for hundreds of years. The stories written down by the brothers Grimm represent the sociohistoric and cultural context from their time. As the world changes old styles of oral storytelling give way to newer ones, particularly technologically advanced ways of narration: books, CDs, DVDs, video games, cinema, et cetera. Although there are numerous newer fantastic stories such as Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter, the fairy tales' timeless themes like good versus evil, love, friendship, fear and bravery still reappear in contemporary narrative media. Today these fairy stories are still engaging for children, teenagers as well as adults. However, one may not find them very often being told in gloomy, fire-lit spinning rooms or read aloud at children's bedsides any more, but rather on a huge screen with surround sound, special visual effects in 3D and lots of popcorn and candy to nibble. One of the most popular of Grimms' folktales is S(ch)neewittchen (KHM 53), internationally known as Snow White, Snow Drop, Blanche-neige or Blanca Nieve. No doubt, Snow White is ¿die beliebteste, meistillustrierte, meist-verfilmte, aber auch vielfach parodierte und verkitschte Figur der Kinder- und Hausmärchen [der Gebrüder Grimm]¿. The tale of Little Snow White has been transformed into many media during the last 200 years, however, Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs from 1937 is supposedly THE classic feature-length animated fairy film par excellence. Since the film won a special Oscar and was one of the most successful films of the 1930s, it was a milestone in the career of the Disney studios and the genre of fairy tales as well. ¿Der Welterfolg dieses Filmes ist ungebrochen. Noch im Jahre 2001, 64 Jahre nach der Premiere und rechtzeitig zum 100. Geburtstag Walt Disneys, erlebte der Streifen ein Comeback als Video-Kasette für das Heimkinö.(...)

Seminar paper from the year 2013 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,7, Catholic University Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, language: English, abstract: The Gothic novel "Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus" is the result of Mary Shelley's travels to Geneva, Switzerland, with her future husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, Dr. John Polidori and Lord Byron, themselves famous authors, and an entertaining contest between those friends about who could write the best horror story. Conceived of a nightmare after reading German ghost stories by the fire and conversing about Darwinism, occult ideas, galvanism and science, the only nineteen-year-old Mary Shelley put this piece of art down on paper and published it anonymously in 1818. Frankenstein is a novel with a complex narrative structure. In the core of the novel the Creature's story is presented to us framed by Victor Frankenstein's story which itself is enframed by Robert Walton's epistolary narrative. The overall structure of the novel is symmetrical: it begins with the letters of Walton, shifts to Victor's tale, then to the Creature's narration, so as to switch to Victor again and end with the records of Walton. In this manner the reader gets different versions of the same story from different perspectives. Mary Shelley's rather atypical approach not to stick to only one narrator and one defined narrative situation throughout the book creates various impressions on the reader of the novel. The narrative situation of a text describes the structure of how the content, plot, characters and events are being mediated to the reader and is often referred to as the point of view. The narrative situation is one of the main categories in literary analysis. One of the most important academics who concerned himself with the systematisation of narrative structures since the 1950s is the Austrian literary theorist Dr. Franz Karl Stanzel (*1923). There is strong competition by the typology of Gérard Genette since the 1990s, however, Stanzel's theory is being taught to date, which is why it is used in the following analysis of the narrative structure in Frankenstein and its effect on the reader.

Seminar paper from the year 2013 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,3, Catholic University Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, language: English, abstract: People have always been interested in language. First records of Sanskrit grammar, morphology and word-formation rules were written down by Panini over 2500 years ago. So it is not surprising that especially now with all the possibilities technology offers, linguists are determined to identify THE word-formation-theory. In the last century there has been a boom in publishing, creating enormous corpora that allow linguists to study a far wider range of written language. Due to the technological possibility of sound and video recording, there are also numerous spoken accounts of language available now (Bauer 1994, 9). In the last decades however, according to Bauer, word-formation is a rather ¿confused area of study¿(2002, xiii), mostly because of its various terminology as well as different methodological and theoretical approaches. Therefore this paper will concentrate on and use the standard terminology Bauer agreed on in English Word-formation. Bauer notes furthermore the confusion in the field of productivity in word-formation. The fact that word-formation processes are in fact productive and create new lexemes can be proved by consulting any dictionary of neologisms or updates in other dictionaries. Nevertheless, linguists dispute over the extent to which word-formation is productive generally. Here the dispute between transformationalist and lexicalist positions to productivity should be mentioned (2002, 62 f., 75). But since this paper will focus on specific neologisms added to the Oxford English Dictionary, the decision of what is listed as a new and independent lexicon entry was made by someone else and should not be of any concern here. This paper will deal with the subject of words, especially newly formed words. What exactly are neologisms and how do they come about? What word-formation processes are involved in the creation of new words? How productive are the different types of word-formation? This paper attempts to answer these questions to a certain extent and furthermore picture the contemporary productivity of word-formation patterns by analysing the new word entries of the March 2013 update in the Oxford English Dictionary as a case study.

Seminar paper from the year 2011 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 2,3, Catholic University Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, language: English, abstract: For centuries the myth of Vampirism has fascinated and scared people at the same time. This may be ascribed to the seductive, mysterious and dangerous nature of vampires as well as the uncertainty of their actual existence. As a matter of course, people are frightened by things they cannot define scientifically or by common sense. If they do really exist though, then what are vampires precisely? Are they supernatural creatures, monstruous animals, or simply evil and twisted criminals? People have always tried to explain wrongdoings of mankind in various different ways. In the Middle Ages the common believe was that evil forces led innocent people to commit crimes. However, during the Age of Enlightenment people began to break away from religious interpretation patterns of crime and address themselves to the task of explaining criminal behaviour with empirical facts. During the centuries after the Middle Ages several theories of criminal behaviour came into being. The classical criminologists defined criminal behaviour as a free choice of people, whereas positivist biologists were convinced of the fact that people are born with a criminal predisposition and could not affect that with their free will in any way. This paper is dealing with one special example of vampirism, the lesbian vampire Carmilla, who seduces and kills innocent women with her ¿deadly eroticism¿1. Joseph Sheridan LeFanu (1814 - 1873)2 published this chilling vampire shortstory in 18723, it was probably his most famous Gothic tale. Chapter II of this paper is going to deal with the developement of the aforementioned two main criminalistic theories (the classical and the positivist theory of crime) and their principal statements, concentrating on the Criminal Woman, the Prostitute and the Lesbian. In the next chapter the theories of the biological movement will be applied to LeFanu's shortstory about the vampire Carmilla, to determine whether she can be defined as a Born Criminal according to the Biologists of the 19th century. The term ¿born criminal¿ was coined by Cesare Lombroso, when he discovered the features of the typical criminal man. In this paper, while examining whether Carmilla is a born criminal or not, the term will be used not only according to Lombroso's theory, but will also include some other opinions about criminal women, (criminal) features of the theory of degeneration and the reception of lesbianism in the Viktorian Age. [...]

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2013 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 2,3, Catholic University Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, language: English, abstract: 'Tell me one last thing' said Harry. Is this real? Or has this been happening inside my head?' [¿] 'Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?'While some people devour the books enthusiastically, others despise and would rather burn them. But whatever people think about the Harry Potter series' social, educational or literary value, they can hardly dismiss them. Harry Potter is a phenomenon worth examining. It is not only the destiny of that shy little boy with his lighting-bolt scar on his forehead that triggered the ¿Harrycane¿, but also the appeal of the magical world of witchcraft. For centuries, witchcraft is the object of research for various scholars of literature, history, theology, arts, folklore, anthropology, medicine and law. To analyse historical witchcraft, they access preserved spell books, court records, administrative correspondences, pamphlets, penitentials, sermons and art works. Due to stereotypisation processes, there is a gap between the popular and academic knowledge of witchcraft. While academics rather refer to the historical witch who supposedly threatened the Church and the State since the Middle Ages and was persecuted in the Early Modern Age, laymen rather associate the witch with pictures they conceive from popular literature: the fairy tale image of an old, crook-backed, evil women who lures children into her gingerbread house and eats them. How has the image of the supposedly ¿single greatest threat to Christian European civilization¿ changed during the Modern Times? Since the first volume was published, scholars from various fields have approached the Harry Potter phenomenon. The main topics of research have been literary interpretations concerning language, motifs, generic classification, mythological elements and cultural questions relating to family, school, peer group and societal issues. Further academic approaches to the Harry Potter series tackled questions of reader interest research, communication studies, marketing strategies, didactics, translations, theology and film adaptations. As of yet, there has not been much research in the field of history and historical witchcraft. The purpose of this paper is to determine whether and how witchcraft and witches in the Harry Potter series are modern. [...]