Presentation Blues...

[mk_tortie]

Oh dear... I'm supposed to be doing a presentation on Hauff's Die Errettung Fatmes tomorrow, and there is absolutely no secondary literature on it at all, so far as I can tell. And so far all I can say about it is that it's a fairytale, I can give a biography of Hauff, and I can confirm that none of the characters were real people and that it's not directly based on a story from Arabian Nights. This is going to be painful... The seminar's to do with Orientalism in German literature, and I can contrast the text to the Reiseberichte texts we were doing before, but so could anybody with half a brain so I'm not sure that's even worth doing... Ergh, I never have a clue what I'm supposed to say in these things! I was going to talk to the lecturer about it after last weeks class, but she didn't turn up last week so I've been left up the creek without a paddle, so to speak. I don't suppose anyone of my flist who speaks German happens to have studied Hauff in depth at all and can enlighten me as to what's so important about this story?

Comments

[anna-in-the-sky.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, I know next to nothing about Hauff and I don't think I've ever read anything by him. :-( Good luck anyway!

[mk-tortie.livejournal.com]

No worries, I didn't seriously expect anyone to turn out to be a Hauff-expert! I'll just talk about his biography for ages instead, that seems to be the standard thing to do when you don't have anything to say about the text!

[lintelsoups.livejournal.com]

My boyfriend used to take German and I think he studied some things.. but I doubt he remembers anything other than taking the class.