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The prerequisite(s) for this Teaching Unit (Unité d’enseignement – UE) for the programmes/courses that offer this Teaching Unit are specified at the end of this sheet.
This course offers a chronological and critical survey of English literature from the 18th to the 21st century. It examines and illustrates the main literary movements and genres of this period and places them in their socio-cultural contexts.
At the end of the course, students should be able to show insight into the distinctive features of major literary movements and genres. They should be able to situate them in their socio-cultural and historical contexts. Students will become familiar with important literary figures and canonical works of the historical period that is studied. They will be expected to know how to read and interpret some key texts.
The contribution of this Teaching Unit to the development and command of the skills and learning outcomes of the programme(s) can be accessed at the end of this sheet, in the section entitled “Programmes/courses offering this Teaching Unit”.
Three assignments - one short film - oral exam (with one written question)
Lectures; PowerPoint presentations, films, required reading, course notes.
This course offers students an opportunity to analyze the dominant literary and artistic productions and movements of the 19th & 20th century and their aftermath: from Victorian to modern, from modern to post- postmodern, post-9/11 and postcolonial fiction. This class contextualizes Victorian times, modernity and the postmodern cultural phenomenon. The class starts with an introduction to Victorian times and literature and an in-depth analysis of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre (1847). It then moves to modernism and postmodernism illustrated by a comparison between Virginia Woolf's modernist novel Mrs Dalloway and Michael Cunningham's postmodern rewriting The Hours. The third section of this module focuses on trauma in Art Spiegelman's Maus (graphic novel) and raises the question of the future of literature after the traumatic events of 9/11 via an analysis of Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005). The last section of the class examines postcolonial literatures via an analysis of Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea (excerpts), the famous prequel to Jane Eyre. Students will prepare readings and questions prior to class time to facilitate discussion. They will participate in the workshops (10 hours). This course also includes references to several cinematic productions.
Coursebook available at DUC.
4 novels
