Aims

Students will be expected to show their ability to relate the set texts to the historical and literary contexts explored in the module. They will have to produce an analysis that confirms their familiarity with the issues raised by the module, and with the poetics through which those issues are articulated.
The module is also indirectly meant to increase the students' lexical skills. Their analyses will therefore have to reflect a command of the English language that corresponds to their level (3rd or 4th year), as well as a good grasp of the various cultural concepts discussed in the module.

Main themes

A different period will be studied each year. The choice is between :
1. The Elizabethan period
2. The Restoration
3. The Victorian period
4. The Interwar period
5. Post-1945

Each period will be studied in its political, economic, social, scientific and cultural aspects. There will also be an overview of the period's literature. The module will then focus on in-depth analyses of key works that are particularly representative of a specific genre.

Method : lectures and seminars

Content and teaching methods

Love… with a Smile? Love in the Contemporary Postmodern and Postcolonial Novel in English

What has love got to do with it? Or what does literature have to do with love? How do individuals struggle with the claims of love at the end of the twentieth century? Has nihilism really replaced the optimistic ideals of love of the counter-culture of the 60s? Does twentieth century literature reflect a crisis of traditional romantic love tied to a more profound crisis of meaning in Western society? How are traditional forms of love and their representations in canonical love stories used, portrayed, rewritten, written back to, demystified, de-sexed, deconstructed like most master narratives, by postmodern and postcolonial novelists?

While drawing from several interdisciplinary approaches to love, this course will focus on, among others, the main characteristics of representative contemporary postmodern and postcolonial novels in English and their capacity to evoke the complexities of love: multiplicity, polyphony, intertextuality, pastiche, inconclusiveness, doubles, the pleasures of anachronism and metafiction. Besides examining the motif and theme of love traditionally conceived, this course will also deal with homosexual love, forbidden love, incestuous love, sexual ambiguity, gender and sexuality. The postcolonial part of the course will lead one to discuss issues such as margins, dislocation and identity, mixed marriages and hybridity, the impact of colonization, the reevaluation of history, power and race tensions, the love of one’s culture(s) and one’s nation(s) as well as the ambivalent relationship of individuals to reality and culture.

More precisely, this course will focus on Michael Cunningham’s The Hours; John Fowles’ The French Lieutenant’s Woman, Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient; Harold Sonny Ladoo’s No Pain like this Body and Pauline Melville’s The Ventriloquist’s Tale. Several filmic adaptations will be critically analysed as well.

Other information (prerequisite, evaluation (assessment methods), course materials recommended readings, ...)

Prerequisites : GERM 1226, GERM 1225 or equivalent modules (introductions to English literature). The set texts (ca. 4 books) should be read before each seminar.

Assessment: an oral exam and an essay.


Study aids : a booklet is handed out to the students at the first lecture. It includes a list of set texts, details about the organisation of the module, a selection of excerpts, a list of questions and a bibliography.

Others : students are invited to take an active part in the module.

Other credits in programs