General and Comparative Literature : Methods and Practices [ LFLTR1330 ]

Course website on ICampus at: http://www.icampus.ucl.ac.be/

This course completes the introduction to European literature begun in course LFLTR 1130, which is a prerequisite.

1. Present the variety of fields of study, methods, practices, theoretical issues and perspectives of general and comparative literature, both as a critical methodology employed in the study of literature and the ways the latter is practiced around the world. 
2. Provide, through this systematic introduction to the discipline, research tools in general and comparative literature, as well as instruction for the preparation of written work relevant to the comparative demonstration (comparative comment of reading notes, etc.).
3. Studies of specific subjects according to comparative methodology and within the broader and theoretical perspective of general literature. The content of the courses offered to students will allow them to come to a clear understanding - through an immediate application consisting of an in-depth study of certain subjects - of the fundamental principles that define this discipline.
    

Understand whether and how cultures and literatures of different periods and linguistic traditions, European and international, interact, according to different phenomena and modalities (readings, translations, travels, loans, adjustments, etc.) within a literary, unitary, constant and simultaneous comprehension of the world.
Explore different critical approaches to literary texts and various methods of analysis applied to literary and artistic facts, with the ultimate aim of implementing a theoretical approach to literature.
By the end of the course, students will have developed a broad and supranational vision of literature as it is produced and read in different countries around the world. They will be able to move, in a systematic and relevant way, within different coherent sets of literary and artistic productions, without temporal, geographic or linguistic limitations.
The comparative approach, based on the simultaneous and joint study of at least two languages and literatures, also constitutes an occasion for students to satisfactorily engage with the new and broadened linguistic and literary knowledge they will have acquired or will be in the process of acquiring within the training provided in their curriculum.
 

Evaluation consists of an oral examination covering the subject matter of the course and required readings.
Each student will be asked to answer at minimum two broad types of questions:

• one or more theoretical questions concerning general and comparative literature, as well as genetic criticism;
• one or more theoretical questions regarding the junction between general and comparative literature and genetic criticism, illustrated by relevant examples from the course, or perhaps by personal examples;
• an applicative question, consisting of receiving a facsimile of a writer's draft and describing some of its genetic characteristics (type of crossing-outs, use of the page ...).
   

1. Lecture
2. Online class
3. Individual and Group exercises to be prepared outside of class + correction sessions
4. Organisation of a seminar on 'Writers' manuscripts and genetic criticism'
5. Required readings and audio-visual documents

This course begins with an overview of different methodologies currently available in general and comparative literature. It then turns to a focus on a specific critical methodology particularly fruitful for comparative studies, or the junction between Comparative Literature and Genetic Criticism. The latter aims to study the literary creation process, documented by writers' archives and manuscripts. Students will first be introduced to theoretical issues and practices of genetic criticism. They will then apply this knowledge to the study of a small number of writers' drafts, from different periods, countries and languages. Through comparison of the analyzed corpus, students will be asked to contextualize their interpretation of textual elements within a comparative literary perspective.

• DE BIASI Pierre Marc, Génétique des textes, Paris, CNRS Editions, 2011.
• PAGEAUX Daniel-Henri, La Littérature générale et comparée, Paris, Armand Colin, 1994 [Chapters 4 « Images » and 5 « Thèmes » ONLY.].