General and Comparative Literature
Code
711111111
Academic unit
Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas
Department
Línguas, Culturas e Literaturas Modernas
Credits
6
Teacher in charge
Alda Jesus Correia
Weekly hours
4
Teaching language
Portuguese
Objectives
a) To recognize and problematize the main questions arising in Comparative Literature through the definition of its object and methodology.
b) To know the evolution and renovation of comparatist schools beyond Europe and the United States of America, emphasizing the alternative, cultural and literary concepts they put forward .
c) To study, in a comparative perspective, genre transformations, through the critical reading of short narrative prose.
Prerequisites
None.
Subject matter
Comparative Literature: object, method and definition suggestion. Schools and thematic areas.
Comparative Literature after the 90s: new models, alternative concepts and post-colonial approaches. The evolution of the area. The study of genre transformation.
The short story, its historic evolution and the problem of its classification as a literary genre. Short fiction theory and criticism. The short story cycle.
Comparative analysis of texts that illustrate the genre evolution
The Biblical narrative, the fable, the tale.
The Thousand and One Night stories and Boccaccios Decameron
The romantic and gothic short story
Gogol and Tchekhov
E. A. Poe, Washington Irving and O. Henry
Maupassant. Regionalism.
The modernist short story: J. Joyce, K. Mansfield; the post modernist short story
Bibliography
Bassnett, S. (1995). Comparative Literature a Critical Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell.
Damrosch, D. et al.(2009). The Princeton Sourcebook in Comparative Literature - from the European Enlightenment to the Global Present. Princeton: Princeton UP.
Fowler, A. (1982). Kinds of Literature. An Introduction to the Theory of Genres and Modes. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
March-Russel, P. (2009). The Short Story -an introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP.
May, C. (1995). The Short Story - The Reality of Artifice. New York: Twayne.
Teaching method
Theoretical classes (50%); practical classes (50%). Practical classes will be based in reading and text commentary: presentation, critical discussion and comparative analysis by the students and professor of the selected literary and theoretical texts.
Evaluation method
One final test (50%); presentation and discussion of an individual essay (50%).