Questions of General and Comparative Literature [ LFIAL2230 ]

Site ICampus course at : http://www.icampus.ucl.ac.be/

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1. Introduction to the history of the discipline, its theoretical framework, methodologies and subfields through the teaching of specific research instruments.

2. Provide an example of a completed study in comparative literature.

Analyze one period and one or more streams of European literature using a comparative perspective. Provide students with a basic understanding of this period and streams of literature, placing the latter in the broader context of the connections that European culture has progressively established across different countries, constituting a unique civilization sharing common evidence, references and connivances. Familiarize students with the aims, essence and methodologies of comparative research, and introduce them to the theoretical foundations of the comparative approach. Students are expected to demonstrate that they have acquired the skills taught during the course and that they have mastered the historical background and literary material characterizing the period and the streams of literature analyzed throughout the course.

The writing assessment of this course (length: 3 hours) 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) (50% of the mark) ;
2. a comparative commentary between 2 excerpts from the required reading (see the list below), related to the focus of the course, but not discussed in the lectures (50% of the mark).

1. Formal lectures about theoretical works and concepts
2. Formal lectures about Vladimir Nabokov's Despair
3. Required reading consisting of 3 novels (see the list below) and theoretical works

The Double : figures, stories, poetry will be the focus of the 2014-2015 general and comparative literature course. Representations of the double and the stories of duplicity abound in literary history and suppose different paradigms (doppelgänger, double, mirror, clone etc). This course will outline a systematization (chronological, thematic and theoretical) of this notion, through a number of authors clearly related to the literary tradition of the double (including Nabokov, Pirandello and Saramago). This comparative analysis will allow both to reconstruct a possible history of the double in its meanings and typologies and to apprehend the concept of duplicity.

Required reading
NABOKOV Vladimir, La Méprise, traduit de l'anglais par Marcel Stora, Paris, Gallimard, 1991 (Folio, n° 2295), 256 p.

PIRANDELLO Luigi, Feu Mathias Pascal, traduit de l'italien par Alain Sarrabayrouse, Paris, Flammarion, 1994 (GF ' Littérature étrangère), 344 p.

SARAMAGO José, L'Autre comme moi, traduit du portugais par Geneviève Leibrich, Paris, Seuil, 2006 (Points), 352 p.

The required reading may also be read in the original language if the linguistic skills of each student permit.