UCL - Sociology of Literature

[ROM2740]

[22.5h] 5 credits

This course is taught in the 2d semester.

Teacher(s):

Language: French

Level: Second

Aims
Main themes
Content and teaching methods

Aims

At the end of the course, the student will have acquired:
insight into the main theories about the relationships between the (popular) literary text and society (sociology of literature and socio-criticism mainly)
practical skills to analyse a (popular) literary text with the theoretical and methodological tools devised by sociologists of literature and socio-critics
competence for reflexiveness towards the functioning of the literary field and in particular towards the mechanisms of allocation of literary value

Main themes

Specificities of the issues of the sociology of literature (external analysis) and of socio-criticism (internal analysis)
Issue of the text-society relationship: historical perspective, contemporary perspective
Methods of sociological and socio-critical analysis
Critical study of the strategies of allocation of literary value (transcendence/immanence)
In-depth analysis of a (popular) literary text from the 19th or 20th century

Content and teaching methods

The aim of this course is to promote the study of the various and complex relationships that a literary text, popular or not, has with the social reality. From such a perspective, the following aspects will be given particular attention: the selection and/or perfecting of concepts, as well as the development of critical discourses through which it is possible to explain, at a given time (the contemporary era) and place (the Francophone world), the functioning of the editorial field and the place literature has in it as a symbolic, cultural and social practice. Procedures will also be developed for the formal analysis of (popular) literary texts which, coupled with the study of their conditions of production and reception, can unveil the mechanisms of allocation of literary value and, as a consequence, the process of legitimization of texts, as well as authors, in the studied field.

Lectures
A lot of emphasis will be placed on the critical reading of theoretical texts and the analysis of extracts of (popular) literary texts.