General and Comparative Literature : Methods and Practices

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This course completes the introduction to European literature begun in course LFIAL 1130, which is a prerequisite.

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.

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 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”.

The course consists of two parts taught by professors Sophie Dufays and Michel Lisse.

• A. The exam on the part of the course taught by Prof. S. Dufays will consist of a Multiple Choice Test based on the content of the lectures and the required readings.
• B. The exam on the part of the course taught by Prof. M. Lisse will consist of a written exam that will require the analysis of one or several texts from the required readings that may be analyzed during the lectures.

1. Lectures.
2. Requiered readings (see « Bibliography »).

In this academic year 2015-2016, the course will be divided into two parts, taught by professors Sophie Dufays and Michel Lisse. In line with the international as well as the interdisciplinary perspective of Comparative literature, the course will focus on two major axis: literature and cinema, and literature and philosophy.
The lectures by prof. S. Dufays will focus on the historical and intermedial path of melodrama from the French Revolution to the First World War. This lecture will consist of several comparisons between several: artistic media (theater, novel, short story, silent film), fictional genres,  texts and films from various geographical and linguistic areas (France and USA), (see "Bibliography", item A). The introduction to the course will provide an overview of the relationship between literature and cinema.
The lectures by prof. Michel Lisse will focus on Deconstruction of War, 1914-18 and Beyond. This part of the course will focus on textual or other events reflecting the concept of war, as well as the representation of the war and its consequences.
Different topics will be discussed: how the "concept" of war can be invalidated or can bring to its own erasure? In which way events and texts can modify the concept of war and its representation? What are the effects produced by these representations? After an introduction devoted to the concept of war, which will be analyzed through the philosophical tradition (Plato, Bernard of Clairvaux, Kant, Hegel) and certain theorists of war (Carl von Clausewitz, Carl Schmitt), the course will focus on a selection of European philosophical and literary texts (Bergson, Cohen, Husserl, Einstein, Freud, Verhaeren, Zweig, Rolland, Jünger, Teilhard de Chardin, Valery, Levinas, Heidegger, Walter Benjamin, Thomas Mann, among others (see "Bibliography", item B).

A. Required readings for the part of the course taught by prof. S. Dufays :

1. Balzac, Honoré de, Adieu (any edition) ;
2. James, Henry, Le Tour d'écrou (The Turn of the Screw), (translated into French by Monique Nemer, e. g. the recent Livre de poche new edition) ;
3. Some excerpts of theoretical texts available on the ICampus e-learning platform (including the introduction and conclusion of Peter Brooks' L'Imagination mélodramatique).

B. Required readings for the part of the course taught by prof. M. Lisse:

1. A Syllabus of philosophical and literary textes available on the ICampus e-learning platform.

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