General and Comparative Literature : Methods and Practices [ LFLTR1330 ]

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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.
 

The final test is an oral examination which covers:
1) the required readings content;
2) the lecture content ;
3) the content of the scientific event connected to the course.
 

1. Lecture
2. Required Readings

In this academic year (2013-2014), the course will be dedicated to 'Literature as a global system'. After presenting the methodologies and the issues related to Comparative Literature, we will study the broad global network of contemporary literature, through concepts such as intertextuality and interdependence. To theoretical readings related to both concepts, we will add the analysis of some contemporary novels, coming from different geographical and cultural areas, in order to show the limits of intertextuality as concept, and to make clear the solutions provided by a notion such as interdependence. Such reflections will draw a first critical framework which may help students to understand contemporary literature in the age of globalization.

1.    Theoretical Works

An electronic syllabus will be available online on ICampus.

2.    Corpus of texts

FRESAN Rodrigo (Argentine), Les Jardins de Kensington, Paris, Seuil, 2012.
MABANCKOU Alain (Congo), Verre Cassé, Paris, Seuil, 2006.
MURAKAMI Haruki (Japon), La Ballade de l'impossible, Paris, 10/18, 2011.

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