These perspectives will be linked with fundamental issues of literary analysis (such as: what is actually the difference between fiction and non-fiction? or: what does it mean to say that a narrator is sincere and reliable?). Theoretical reflections and close readings alternate in this course, and we will take our examples from the classic and modern books that everybody is talking about, such as the work by W.G. Sebald, Henry James, Rudyard Kipling, or Bret Easton Ellis.
The course consists of eight modules each focusing on a different topic and taught by a different university with faculty interaction and feedback provided.
Topics covered include:
- Week One: Literature and Literacy in a changed media environment (Truyen)
- Week Two: Extended literature: Introducing digital literature (Sanchez-Mesa)
- Week Three: Literature & Photography (Baetens)
- Week Four: Negotiating high culture and low culture at the treshold of Modernism: Literature and magazines, literature and illustrations (Meneghelli & Turci)
- Week Five: Some narratological key concepts: generic framing, interpretive and evaluative regimes (Korthals-Altes)
- Week Six: Creolising cultures in/and Europe: a Caribbean perspective (Van Haesendonck)
- Week Seven: Fictionality beyond fiction: changes and exchanges in art and politics (Nielsen, Kjerkegaard and Mohring Reesdorf)
- Week Eight: New Complex Narratives Across Media (Grishakova)