Questions of Literary History [ LROM2720 ]

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Literary history is a critical construction, ever shifting, which tells us just as much about the context in which it is produced as the periods to which it refers: discourse which brings together past and present.
The course invites students to become aware of this phenomenon by discovering the principles and elements involved in the construction of this discourse.
Each year, a specific subject is chosen (an aspect of literary life, the development of a genre or a theme), which provides the main topic for study.

By the end of the course, students should be able to:

-         set discourse on literature in a historical context and know how to recognise the principles they employ. To identify accounts of literary history as examples of built discourse.
-         establish a link between literature theory (view of the the phenomenon of literature in general) and critique (view of individual works).
-         set literary studies in the context of social sciences.
-         produce a critique of the critique : to treat accounts of literary history as structures for analysis ; to highlight the strategies employed by different forms of criticism.

The course will start by a presentation of its theoretical question before thinking of it through the study of particular texts.

The title of the course is : « Un genre dans le genre : autobiographies de femmes au XIXe siècle »

The main works studied is the following :
- Guillery, Justine, Mémoires de Justine Guillery. 1789-1846, éd. M.-P. de Weerdt-Pilorge, Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2007.
- Sand, George, Histoire de ma vie, éd. D. Zanone, GF-Flammarion, 2001, 2 vol.
- Tristan, Flora, Pérégrinations d'une paria, éd. S. Michaud, Actes Sud, « Babel », 2004.
 

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