Western Literary Tradition II
Code: 100252 ECTS Credits: 6| Degree | Type | Year |
|---|---|---|
| 2503998 Catalan Philology: Literary Studies and Linguistics | OT | 4 |
Contact
- Name:
- David Roas Deus
- Email:
- david.roas@uab.cat
Teaching groups languages
You can view this information at the end of this document.
Prerequisites
By obtaining the minimum of credits in basic training subjects, students have demonstrated to have acquired the basic competences and they will be able to express themselves orally and in writing. For this reason, any spelling and expression errors that may be committed will lead to a score decrease in the final grade.
Activities, practical sessions and papers submitted in the course must be original and under no circumstances will the total or partial plagiarism of third-party materials published on any medium be admitted. Any submission of non-original material without properly indicating its origin will automatically result in a failure rating (0).
It is also expected that students know the general rules of submission of an academic work. However, students could apply the specific rules that the teacher of the subject may indicate to them, if they deem it necessary.
Objectives and Contextualisation
The course is an approach to the debate around literary modernity and postmodernity. The texts chosen to reflect about these themes hold an eminent place in the current canon, they have been studied from different methodologies and they have received some of the most celebrated practical achievements of literary criticism.
In conversation with the previous ones, we will study texts that, due to their poetic capacity and critical force, appear as vanishing points to the Western canon, and have shown to be capable of generating their own genealogies. The objective of this module is that the selected readings constitute the starting point for a critical reflection on the Western literary tradition.
We will work on the development of a critical perspective informed by feminisms and cultural studies.
Competences
- Critically read and interpret texts.
- Interpret literary texts from a philological and comparative viewpoint.
- Interpret the thematic and symbolic content of narrative, poetic and theatrical texts in accordance with the main analytical methodologies and according to their textual and pragmatic strategies.
- Students must be capable of collecting and interpreting relevant data (usually within their area of study) in order to make statements that reflect social, scientific or ethical relevant issues.
- Students must be capable of communicating information, ideas, problems and solutions to both specialised and non-specialised audiences.
- Students must develop the necessary learning skills to undertake further training with a high degree of autonomy.
Learning Outcomes
- Analyse literary texts using the different concepts and methods of comparative literature.
- Argue a case regarding several literary topics and problems arising from different works and evaluate the results.
- Argue a case regarding several literary topics and problems arising from different works, and evaluate the results.
- Critically interpret literary works, taking into account the relationships between the different areas within literature and their relationship to humanistic, artistic and social areas.
- Explain the basic characteristics of the compared literary texts.
- Express ideas effectively in formal academic texts by adopting argumentative and textual procedures.
- Identify and explain the basic characteristics of literary texts and the interpretation process.
- Identify and explain the fundamentals of the literary communication process in each genre and those of the interpretation process based on questions and theoretical and/or practical activities.
- Identify the ancient Greco-Latin sources that have inspired artists and literati of the Western cultural tradition.
- Match literary texts to their corresponding formal and cultural contexts.
- Match literary texts to their corresponding genres.
- Recognise the influence of the Greco-Latin literary genres and works in texts of the post-classical European literary tradition.
- Resolve tasks on authors, methods and trends in comparative literature by drawing on knowledge of other humanistic disciplines.
- Seek out, choose and manage information independently, both from structured sources (databases, bibliographies, or specialist journals) and from internet searches.
- Set a plan for working on an assignment on the subject area.
- Solve problems related to methods of study of different literatures.
- Solve problems related to the historical placement of literary texts.
- Solve problems related to the theoretical foundations and the main concepts in the study of literary criticism.
- Submit assignments in formats tailored to requirements and personal styles, whether carried out individually or in a small group.
- Write text commentaries from a critical standpoint.
Content
Contents
1. Modernity and Postmodernity. History, meaning and discussion of two concepts
2. Charles Baudelaire, Les fleurs du mal
3. Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass
4. Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
5. Franz Kafka, The Castle
6. Jorge Luis Borges, Ficciones
7. Margarte Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale
Activities and Methodology
| Title | Hours | ECTS | Learning Outcomes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Type: Directed | |||
| Master classes | 55 | 2.2 | |
| Type: Supervised | |||
| Programmed tutorials | 20 | 0.8 | |
| Type: Autonomous | |||
| written papers | 75 | 3 |
The learning of this subject by the students is distributed as follows:
- Directed activities (35%). These activities are divided into master classes and seminars and classroom practices led by the faculty, in which theoretical explanation is combined with discussion of all types of texts.
- Supervised activities (15%). These tutorials are programmed by the teacher, dedicated to correcting and commenting on problems both related to the syllabus of the subject and, above all, to the written papers that the student must present.
- Autonomous activities. These activities include both time devoted to individual study and production of written papers.
Annotation: Within the schedule set by the centre or degree programme, 15 minutes of one class will be reserved for students to evaluate their lecturers and their courses or modules through questionnaires.
Annotation: Within the schedule set by the centre or degree programme, 15 minutes of one class will be reserved for students to evaluate their lecturers and their courses or modules through questionnaires.
Assessment
Continous Assessment Activities
| Title | Weighting | Hours | ECTS | Learning Outcomes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Final written work on a topic previously agreed upon with the teacher | 60% | 0 | 0 | 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 |
| Two critical reviews | 40% | 0 | 0 | 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 |
The evaluation will be carried through three mandatory written assignments to be submitted in November and December. Students can only apply for re-evaluation if they have submitted all the papers and have been suspended for failing to achieve the required grade point average.
In the event that tests or exams cannot be taken onsite, they will be adapted to an online format made available through the UAB’s virtual tools (original weighting will be maintained). Homework, activities and class participation will be carried out through forums, wikis and/or discussion on Teams, etc. Lecturers will ensure that students are able to access these virtual tools, or will offer them feasible alternatives.
Unique assessment
Students who decide to take the single assessment will have to take two final exams to prove they have read all the required readings of each block (35% + 35%) and deliver two critical reviews (30%) at the end of the semester.
Bibliography
Mandatory readings
Atwood, Margaret, El cuento de la criada, Salamandra, Barcelona, 2017.
Baudelaire, Charles, Las flores del mal, edición de Alain Verjat y Luis Martínez de Merlo, trad. Luis Martínez de Merlo, Cátedra, Madrid, 1997.
Borges, Jorge Luis Borges, Ficciones, Alianza Editorial, Madrid, 2006.
Carroll, Lewis, Alicia en el País de las Maravillas. A través del espejo, edición de Manuel Garrido, trad. de Ramón Buckley, Cátedra, Madrid, 2006.
Conrad, Joseph, El corazón de las tinieblas, edición de Fernando Galván y José Santiago Fernández Vázquez, trad. de Araceli García Ríos e Isabel Sánchez Araujo, Cátedra, Madrid, 2006.
Kafka, Franz, El castillo, edición y traducción de Luis Acosta, Cátedra, Madrid, 1998.
Bibliography
This list contains the basic bibliographic references for the theoretical framework of the subject (definition and study of modernity and postmodernity).
The specific bibliography for each author will be shared during the course.
AA.VV., La polémica de la postmodernidad, monográfico de Revista de Occidente, núm. 66 (noviembre de 1986).
Barth, John, «Literatura postmoderna», Quimera, 46/47 (1984-1985), pp. 13-21.
Calinescu, Matei, Cinco caras de la modernidad, Tecnos, Madrid, 1991.
Calvino, Italo, Seis propuestas para el próximo milenio, Ediciones Siruela, Madrid, 1989.
Feher, Ferenc, “Comentario sobre el intermezzo postmodernista”, Revista de Occidente, núm. 66 (noviembre de 1986), pp. 57-74.
Foster, Hal (ed.), La posmodernidad, Kairós, Barcelona, 1985.
Gay,Peter, Modernidad. La atracción de la herejía de Baudelaire a Beckett, Paidós, Barcelona, 2007.
Habermas, Jurgen, El discurso filosófico de la modernidad, Taurus, Madrid, 1989.
Hart, J., “Comparative Poetics, Postmodernism and the Canon: An Introduction”, Canadian Canadian Review of Comparative Literature / Revue Canadienne de Littérature Comparée, 20:1-2 (1993), pp. 1-8.
Hutcheon, Linda, A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory and Fiction, Routledge, Londres, 1988.
Jameson, Fredric, Teoría de la postmodernidad, Trotta, Madrid, 1996.
Jauss, Hans-Robert, «Italo Calvino: Si una noche de invierno un viajero. Informe sobre una estética postmoderna», en Las transformaciones de lo moderno, Visor, Madrid, 1995, pp. 223-251.
Lipovetski, Gilles, La era del vacío. Ensayos sobre el individualismo contemporáneo, Anagrama, Barcelona, 1993.
Lipovetski, Gilles, y Sébastien Charles, Los tiempos hipermodernos, Anagrama, Barcelona, 2006.
Llovet, Jordi, “Vigencia de la modernidad”, La Página, núm. 3 (junio de 1990), pp. 8-15.
Lyon, David, Postmodernidad, Alianza Edtorial, Madrid, 1996.
Lyotard, Jean-François, La condición postmoderna, Cátedra, Madrid, 1986.
Lyotard, Jean-François, «Reescribir la modernidad», Revista de Occidente, 66 (noviembre de 1986), pp. 23-33.
Marchán Fiz, Simón, «Le bateau ivre: para una genealogía de la sensibilidad postmoderna», Revista de Occidente, 42 (noviembre de 1984), pp. 7-28.
Navajas, Gonzalo, «Retórica de la novela postmoderna española», en Teoría y práctica de la novela española posmoderna, Edicions del Mall, Barcelona, 1987, pp. 13-40.
Navajas, Gonzalo, Más allá de la posmodernidad, EUB, Barcelona, 1996.
Pardo, José Luis, «Filosofía y clausura de la modernidad», Revista de Occidente, 66 (noviembre de 1986), pp. 35-47.
Perloff, Marjorie, «Modernist Studies», en S. Greenblatt-G. Gunn, Redrawing the Boundaries, Modern Language Association, Nueva York, 1992, pp. 154-178.
Picó, Josep (comp.), Modernidad y postmodernidad, Alianza Editorial, Madrid, 1988.
Roas, David, Tras los límites de lo real. Una definición de lo fantástico, Páginas de Espuma, Madrid, 2011.
Rowe, John Carlos, «Postmodernist Studies», en S. Greenblatt-G. Gunn, Redrawing the Boundaries, Modern Language Association, Nueva York, 1992, pp. 179-208.
Saldaña, Alfredo, “Postmodernidad: Todo vale, aunque de nada sirva”, Tropelías, núm. 5-6 (1994-1995), pp. 349-369.
Santiáñez, Nil, Investigaciones literarias. Modernidad, historia de la literatura y modernismo, Crítica, Barcelona, 2002.
Vattimo, Gianni, et al., En torno a la posmodernidad, Anthropos, Barcelona, 1990.
Wellmer, Albrecht, Sobre la dialéctica de modernidad y postmodernidad, Visor, Madrid, 1993.
Software
No
Language list
| Name | Group | Language | Semester | Turn |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| (PAUL) Classroom practices | 1 | Catalan | first semester | morning-mixed |
| (TE) Theory | 1 | Catalan | first semester | morning-mixed |