Main themes |
- Reflection on the concept of "history of literature": analysis of its methodological and disciplinary foundations (especially Dutch literature);
- Presentation of the history of Dutch literature and contextualization bearing in mind the main cultural, philosophical and political European productions;
- Description of its periodization from the Middle Ages to the 19th century ;
- Synthesis of the major literary productions and confrontation with the analysis of individual movements.
Compulsory readings of literary texts illustrate the course.
|
Aims |
At the end of the course, students should be able to :
- read and understand texts in Dutch, from the Middle Ages to the 19th century ;
- explain the main developments of Dutch literature from the Middle Ages to the 18th century and relate them to different contexts (linguistic, cultural, philosophical, aesthetic, ideological, social, political) as well as the European literary context;
- situate the major authors and literary texts on a timeline (periods, movements, generations) and show the distinctive features of the literary facts by means of the history of literary criticism (aesthetics, genres, themes, poetics, genetics, media, reception, institution, etc.) ;
- critically discuss the legitimacy and the validity of the periodization used and write (from a historical and cultural perspective) some brief personal comments (essay, dissertation) on a literary text.
|
Evaluation methods |
Evaluation of knowledge and contents related to the lectures: oral exam.
Evaluation of literary know-how and learning competences:
1. the summary of a literary text of a specific period, the summary of and a personal comment on a brief article on that literary text: oral exam;
2. Critical reading of chosen text with the help of a documentary source: written work.
The individual project at the end of the bachelors programme may be linked to this evaluation.
|
Teaching methods |
The course includes lectures with multimedia elements, commented readings in Dutch chosen in function of the themes, registers, genres, periods. These (or other representative) texts are read at home and prepared during tutorials. The tutorials (10 hours) help the students to carry out text analyses.
The course also contains interactive learning activities and specific reading tasks (individual or collective).
|
Content |
This course is devoted to the study of major Dutch literary movements from the Middle Ages to the end of the 18th century. It explores some movements and genres, major authors, main figures and founding texts in Dutch literature and situates them in their historical contexts (linguistic, political, philosophical, social, cultural).
Representative texts (or excerpts) illustrate the course.
|