UCL - In-depth study of a period of English literature

[GERM2722]

[22.5h] 5 credits

This course is taught in the 2d semester.

Teacher(s): Guido Latre

Language: English

Level: Second

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

Aims

The student should be able to distinguish different literary developments in one or two periods of the 20th and/or 21st century (e.g. 1968 to the present, the literature of the two world wars). He should become acquainted with the principal authors and trends of this period and be able to examine them critically. The course should equip the students with models of literary analysis that are applicable to other texts and authors of the same as well as other periods.
The course is also indirectly meant to increase the students' lexical skills. Their analyses will therefore have to reflect a command of the English language that corresponds to their level (Masters), as well as a good grasp of the various cultural concepts discussed in the course.

Main themes

The course focuses on the literary developments of the chosen period(s), which will be illustrated by the analysis of some representative works.

Content and teaching methods

This course looks at "Chaucer our contemporary." It discusses the parallels and differences between how recent generations have been confronted with the "shock of the modern," and the way in which Geoffrey Chaucer experienced the radical changes of his own days. The fragmentation of voices and experiences characterizes not only Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, but also several literary and cinematographic creations of the 20th and 21st centuries, in which Chaucer's masterpiece is a direct source: Eliot's The Waste Land (1922) and the 2004 BBC adaptation of several of Chaucer's stories.

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

Assessment: written exam
Course materials: text syllabus; some stories from The Canterbury Tales in The Norton Anthology, part 1.