EKIA4100 Cultural Currents in Literature (5 cr)

Content

In this course, culture is approached as the totality of intellectual, spiritual and aesthetic development, signifying practices and ways of life (Williams 1983). Movement and interrelationality - aspects that characterise culture and cultural production - are starting points from which literature is studied. We ask the question: how do literatures from different parts of the English speaking worldinterrelate with the sociocultural situations in which they were produced? The literatures studied represent the mobility, cultural variety and multivoicedness of the Anglophone sphere. Moreover, we will also approach literature as literary texts based on certain narrative choices and thus, the course offers some basic reading tools to approach literary presentation.

Completion methods

Contact teaching: participating to lectures, reading and discussion tasks and a final essay.

Self-study: studying the course material and doing the assignments in Moodle including a final paper.

Assessment details

Contact course: Active participation to lectures, final essay

Self-study: Assignments and final paper

On completing the course, the students

• Are familiar with contemporary Anglophone literatures from different parts of the English speaking world,
• Are aware of the multiformity of the relationships between cultural phenomena and literary representation,
• Can refer to some theories of culture and literature when analysing the above relations,
• Are able to analyse and explain some of the basic literary devices such as genre, narrative, narration, narrator, plot, character and time.

Attendance policy in contact course: 80%

To be specified later