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So what you're saying is that all German lit experts are dour and depressing?

Ha. In one higher-level class (juniors and seniors), an older prof asked the class whether most students these days were religious. Response: "If we were when we started this major, we sure aren't now." Anxious laughter followed by contemplative nodding, all around.

Well yes. We had a situation reminding me of your story. ;-)

And no, we are not dour nor depressing. Me (having been highly influenced by formalism and structuralism) just wanted to know, what made stories work the way they do? What are/were the pieces, that allowed so many different people to read so many different things into these stories.

I wanted to understand the ground, the basis of all this. And I believe, that this yielded some quite interesting and counter-intuitive insights into some texts.

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