UCL - Introduction to the Principal Works in European Literature II

[FLTR1520]

[30h] 3 credits

This course is taught in the 2d semester.

Teacher(s): Erica Durante

Language: French

Level: First

Aims
Main themes
Content and teaching methods
Other information (prerequisite, evaluation (assessment methods), course materials recommended readings, ...)

Aims

The course aims to show how different strains of European literature progressively come to rely on one another, creating both a unified network and interactive diversities. We focus particularly on literary movements and tendencies that spanned all of Europe.
By the end of the course, the student should be able to discern the continuities and discontinuities that mark the key moments of European literature. They should likewise be able to situate their literary specialization within the global literary perspective to which their specialization belongs. And finally, the students should be able to see how European language literature written outside of Europe relates to the literature of the Old Continent, both in what they share and in how they differ.

Main themes

Content and method :
We shall study European authors who have privileged relationships with, or have made decisive contributions to, literature in the three orientations to be studied (Classical, Romance, and Germanic). The aim is to show the student how the influential movements, the great trends, and the network which constitutes the tissue and history of European culture are constituted. For instance: the links to the Renaissance, in Classical literature, Italian literature, and other kinds of European literature; trans-linguistic meaning and influence; the trans-historical and trans-national character of key European themes, like Don Juan or Faust; the links between the emerging American literature and the literature of the Old Continent (Poe and the fantastic, R. Darío and modernism, etc.).
The course will put to work the methods proper to the history of European literatures, to its themes, and to comparisons. The lecture course will be supported by texts of the works studied; as well as the lectures, a folder of readings will be provided: to some extent, the student will be able to choose what he or she reads.

Content and teaching methods

This course completes the introduction to European literature begun in course FLTR1510, which is a prerequisite. Content: Love has always permeated all literary traditions (western, eastern and far-eastern) as well as all literary genres. Over the course of the centuries, different ways of treating and conceptualizing writing on love gave rise to a variety of poetics. The analysis of writings on love can therefore be considered as a way to access the times and trends which characterize European literary history. In this course, we will study literary works from the Middle Ages to the XX century through the window of love writing. Through this ubiquitous subject, interpreted in very different ways by the multitude of authors who have written on it over the course of time, we will analyze key phases and works of the European literary tradition.
Teaching methods: We will apply research methods particular to European literary history, to thematology and to comparative literature. Students will be required to read a series of texts on which the final examination will be based.

Other information (prerequisite, evaluation (assessment methods), course materials recommended readings, ...)

Assessment:The final written exam will cover two aspects: verification of knowledge acquisition for the course; the production of a written paper by the student on texts not covered in class, but chosen from the proposed reading folder.

Course holder: This lecture course may be given by a team of lecturers.

Support: A more detailed program of the course can be found on ICAMPUS (http://www.icampus.ucl.ac.be)