Aims

This quite difficult course aims to help the students to go thoroughly into parts of the basic notions in literary theory (learned in the first degree), which means the analysis of the discursive core in the main literary genres beyond the common rhetorical rules and the styles related to History movements. A certain taste for logical reasoning and use of concepts coming from the human sciences (such as linguistics, anthropology, philosophy and psychoanalysis) is required.

Main themes

The course gives a critical and comparative study of literary genres which is not restricted to a list of rhetorical rules presiding creation but aims to bring out discursive constancies about the "tragic". This study of "tragic" as a concept is lead through some great theoricians and the analysis of texts belonging to three different periods: the Ancient Greek world with Sophocles' seven tragedies, Baroque with Shakespeare's several playwrights (at least Hamlet and King Lear), the XXth century with some French-speaking contemporary authors (for instance Claudel, Beckett, Ionesco). Comparisons will be made with mythical, epic, comic and novelistic discourse.

Content and teaching methods

The course aims to lead the students through the logic of tragic which is present throughout the whole European literary History and to make them understand the structure of other genres core: mythic, epic, comic, novelistic. The theoretical concepts provided during class and the numerous analyses of texts will prepare the way to elaborate similar reasoning on different works and times.

The teaching and research purpose is to bring out (relative) constancies about the tragic which are not necessarily responding to the various genres or forms they are appearing like through History (epic, tragedy, novel and so on). Indeed the evolution of literary forms does not always follow the same direction as the evolution of more fundamental features.

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

Teaching method: The course will be centred on solving the problematic; essentially theoretical and magisterial teaching fulfilled with numerous analysis of works from various times. In case, translations of these works will be suggested by the teacher who chose them after a comparison concerted between her and colleagues from the Germanic and Classical departments. The pedagogical material consists in a selected bibliography.

Evaluation: Evaluation will be certificatory (grade) and formative (personal essay analysing a work which does not belong to the selected corpus).

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