General and Comparative Literature : Methods and Practices [ LFIAL1330 ]

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This course completes the introduction to European literature begun in course LFIAL 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 writing assessment of this course consists of 2 parts:

1. a multiple choice exam based on the course contents presented in the formal lectures and on the contents of the required reading (novels and theoretical texts);
2. short questions requiring an application of the theory to the novels presented in the bibliography.

1.    Formal lectures
2.    Required reading

In 2014-2015, the thematic will be « Challenges and issues of Comparative Literature in the contemporary world ». First, we will study the historical, epistemological and methodological implications of Comparative Literature. Then, we will present the different fields of research that exist in Comparative Literature. Eventually, we will work on various case studies, in order to illustrate the theoretical discourse.

1.    Theoretical works (required reading)
A syllabus of theoretical texts

2.    Novels (required reading)
CONRAD Joseph (Grande-Bretagne), Au coeur des ténèbres, traduit de l'anglais par Jean-Jacques Mayoux, Paris, Flammarion, 2012 (GF).
HALFON Eduardo (Guatemala), Monastère, traduit de l'espagnol (Guatemala) par Albert Bensoussan, Paris, Quai Voltaire, 2014 (La Table Ronde), 160 p.
 

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