UCL - Francophone Literature: Belgium

[RIEF2442]

[] 5 credits

This course is not taught in 2009-2010

Teacher(s):

Language: French

Level: Second

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

Aims

The skills to be acquired are aesthetic, historical, and political in nature. They involve
- recognizing the existence,
- knowing the complex history,
- understanding the worth and the particular characteristics,
- and analysing the main works
of Belgium's French-speaking literature.

Main themes

- The course studies the works of the most recognized authors and goes on to look at the complex conditions of the emergence and blossoming of a French-speaking literature in Belgium.
- Analysis of exceptional works and of the aesthetic currents to which they belong leads, more generally, to exploring their connections with the country's political, linguistic, and institutional history, to identifying affinities with the literature of neighbouring countries, and, in the case of the most recent of them, to situate them within the framework of the French-speaking world.

Content and teaching methods

Built following an inductive methodology, the course will focus on the great works of Belgian French-speaking literature, locates them in their context and brings out the singular answer they have given to the discourses peculiar to the time. The accent will be stressed on the problematic matters. These are explained in the syllabus, which gathers the contextual and historical data dealt within the lectures, and systematically presents them in a patrimonial prospective (whereas the lectures will mainly focus on textual questioning and analysis). The syllabus gives additional information rather than repeating the lectures.

Contents: Complexity of an emerging literature. De Coster and the Legend of Ulenspiegel. Lemonnier and the naturalism. 1880's generation (Rodenbach, Maeterlinck, Elskamp, Eekhoud, Verhaeren). Effervescence of the inter-war period (new dramaturgies, surrealisms, Baillon, and so on) After World War II (exile figures, "Belgique sauvage"). Turning-point of the Seventies (return to the History, ways of intimacy).

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

No former knowledge required.
Tool: syllabus (see above), list of required readings.
Two possibilities are offered:
- The students who lives in Belgium during the second semester will attend to the lectures;
- The students can also follow the lectures from abroad, on behalf of the international agreements between several universities: recorded lectures (audio and video), video-conferences, teachers exchanges; a specific and personal work will be demanded to the students.
The students which have previously attended the ROM 1523, Belgian French-speaking literature will not choose this course but the RIEF 2443, French-speaking literature: Eastern Europe and Switzerland.