Questions of General and Comparative Literature

Teacher(s)

Dufays Sophie;

Language

French

Prerequisites

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Main themes

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.

Aims

At the end of this learning unit, the student is able to :
1	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 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”.

Content

In 2017-2018, the course will examine different forms, themes, processes and effects of nostalgia in literature and cinema from the 1980s, considering it as a highly symptomatic phenomenon of contemporary culture and society. The first part of the course will define the nostalgic sentiment based on a series of literary excerpts (from Homer's Odyssey) and theoretical texts, which will allow to understand all its complexity and ambivalences (retromania, regressive yearning to restore a golden age, but also reflexive and creative relation to the past). We will also precise the links between nostalgia and other associated or apparently opposite concepts, like irony, utopia, memory, (post)modernity, mourning or melancholia. Starting from this perspective, the second part of the course will analyze several novels and films in relation to their respective contexts (most of which are defined by the prefix 'post': postcommunism, postcolonialism, postmodernism, postanalog technology ').

Teaching methods

- Formal lectures
- Personal reading of 3 novels (2 from the required reading and 1 from the selected reading) + 4 films (3 from the required watching and 1 from the selected watching)
- Active participation to the discussions on the novels 

Evaluation methods

The writing assessment of this course will be a paper in French (length between 2500 and 3500 words). In this paper, students will compare one of the required novels/films and one of the optional novels/films, on an issue related to nostalgia. The comparison will cover two novels OR one novel and one film but not two films.
The paper will be submitted on the first day of the exam session of January (and/of September). Two versions will be submitted: a printed version in the teacher's pigeonhole (Erasme College, 3rd floor, B-wing) and an electronic version (PDF) posted on Moodle.
The evaluation mode is the same for each session.

Other information

Some theoretical texts will be only in English.
The books may also be read in the original language, depending on the  language skills of each student.

Bibliography

- Deux romans et trois films obligatoires (probablement, mais sujet à modifications : Beloved de Toni Morrison ; L'ignorance de Milan Kundera ; Et nous irons tous en enfer de Fernando Vallejo ; In the Mood for Love de Wong Kar-Wai ; Tabou de Miguel Gomes ; et Midnight in Paris de Woody Allen)
- Une liste complémentaire d''uvres optionnelles sera communiquée en début de cours.
- Un syllabus avec des extraits de textes littéraires (e. a. Homère, Du Bellay, Rousseau, Wordsworth, Novalis, Proust, Nabokov) et de textes théoriques (e. a. Freud, Jean Starobinski, Svetlana Boym, Fredric Jameson, John J. Su, Dennis Walder, Katharina Niemeyer) sera disponible à la DUC.

Faculty or entity

FIAL