English Literature : Critical Approaches [ LGERM1124 ]

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The course is accessible to all students of first year who followed language courses during the first "quadrimestre".

Close in-depth critical study of contemporary canonical texts. This course introduces students to narratology, stylistics and genre theory. Several literary texts (poems, novels, short stories, plays) are analysed.

By the end of this module students will have acquired an appropriate range of methods to analyze one or more literary genres through the analysis of canonical contemporary texts (19th, 20th, 21st century). Students will be able to interpret a poem, a short story, a novel and/or a play with basic scholarly methods and tools to approach a literary text critically.

Written exam.

Teaching method : formal lectures + 10 hours of tutorial (seminar sessions).

Introduction to the nature and functions of literary texts. Literary history and literary theory. Genres and genre studies. How to read a poem ? Introduction to narratology (Fitzgerald, Danticat, Lahiri) What is a novel ? Theoretical approaches to literature : (post) structuralist, Feminist, Marxist, ecocritical approaches to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Focus on English Drama : from Shakespeare to Beckett. Analysis of Harold Pinter's Betrayal.

Andrew Bennett, Literature, Criticism and Theory. Longman, 2009.

Course materials : Coursebook available at DUC.