GERM2013 · German Studies

Klagen, Jammern, Meckern: The German Art of Complaint

Morrissey College of Arts & Sciences

According to some, Americans are currently living through an age of grievance (Frank Bruni), a period in which civility and common ground have been supplanted by unappeasable protest and dissent. There is, however, a long and rich history of grievance and complaint that spans the globe, though exhibiting a great deal of variation from one epoch or region to the next. In this German-language course, we will survey this history as it pertains to the German-speaking world specifically, beginning with baroque elegies (Klagelieder) of the seventeenth century and ending with works of contemporary dissidence by literary and artistic activists. In tracing this history, we will attempt to delineate various forms, genres, and styles of complaining while also considering the social, psychological, and political functions of complaints and the factors that prompt them. Moreover, students will have the opportunity to activate this knowledge by voicing various complaints of their own, real or invented, by drawing on this canon of complaint and its stockpile of rhetorical gestures.