Contemporary Literature (20170)
Degree/study: Degree in Humanities
Year: 4th.
Term:1st
Number of ECTS credits: 5 credits
Hours of studi dedication: 125 hours
Teaching language or languages: spanish
Teaching Staff: Javier Aparicio Maydeu (group 1) / Hélène Rufat Perelló (group 2)
1. Presentation of the subject
The course is thought as a reading guide of the most significant texts of contemporary narrative. The course specially emphasizes the study of the interdisciplinary relationship between the twentieth century narrative and the artistic expressions of that period.
The aim of this course is analysing the contemporary literature through
narrative. Its origins in the avant-garde between the wars and its evolution are studied in this course rebuilding the process of taking down the tradition
from realism so that, in fact, the course becomes a thematic story
contemporary narrative. The topics coincide with each piece that composed the traditional novel that has been broken up (linear time,
homogeneous space and omniscient point of view from other things) and the new trends that have been emerging from the end of the deconstruction of the realist novel
2. Competences to be attained
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Transferable skills |
Specific competences |
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Critical reading of a literary text.
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Knowledge of the development of
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3. Contents
Unit 1. Preliminaries for an introduction to contemporary literature
1.1. Names and concepts: modernity, modernism, postmodernism, avant-garde;
neovanguard and kistch.
1.2. For a poetics of contemporary literature: idea of self-awareness and idea of metafiction. Literature as a game with the history of literature: Eliot;
Foucault, Joyce, Borges, and Barth. The transtextuality (Genette). The irony.
Hypertext concept.
1.3. The historical avant-garde and its break with tradition (Calinescu). the
postmodern reconstruction (Eco, Barth, and Hutcheon). The neovanguard: the Group
of 63 and the Group of 47. The contemporary literature as a transgression. The paradoxes of the creative freedom acquisition.
The Scriptor Ludens of the historical vanguard. Literature and industrial culture. the
Futurism and Expressionism. The languages of Surrealism: the influence of
Freud and Jung. Svevo.
1.4. The literature considered as a consumption item. Writers and the scriptwriters:
best sellers, Follett, Grisham and Clancy. Serialization. The market as a
modifier of literary creation.
1.5. Sources for understanding the current literature. Bibliography: literary magazines.
Unit 2: Sketch of a thematic story of contemporary narrative
2.1. The nineteenth century model understood as a tradition. Realism and naturalism.
2.2. The process of breaking up and reconstruction of the tradition:
2.2.1. First realistic dissolutions. The beginning of the breaking up of the traditional novel: James, Madox, Ford, and Mann. The spirit of modernism. Modifications in the concept of reality: Bloomsbury and the North American center. Nabokov.
2.2.2. Changes in narrative time: Proust, analogies and reminiscences. Durée novel. Woolf. Faulkner.
2.2.3. Bakhtin, Faulkner, Durrell and changes in perspective and in polyphony. The end of omniscience: Malcolm Lowry. The inner monologue: Joyce and Woolf.
2.2.4. Changes in the narrative space. Mythical spaces: Faulkner and Garcia Marquez.
2.2.5. Changes in narrative structure. The counterpoint or the impossible simultaneity:
Huxley, Dos Passos and Döblin. The Jigsaw Novel: Perec.
2.2.6. Changes to the narrator. Sieges to the bourgeois system. The nihilism in the social field
and perspective and existential absurdity: Kafka and Musil. The Valle-Inclán's distorted mirrors. Narrative of the absurdity: Camus.
2.2.7. Changes in the perspective and objectivism: Nouveau roman.
Cinema: Robbe-Grillet and Duras. The dichotomy show-explain.
2.2.8. Changes in language. The linguistic creationism and the neo-baroque:
Joyce, Lezama, and Cabrera Infante. The text as a funny object. Literature and
combinatorial computing: Queneau and the Oulipo group. Literature and Orality: Salinger.
2.2.9. Pastiche and Collage: Joyce and Perec.
2.2.10. Changes in the scheme of literary communication. The claim of reader to participate. Readers as authors (Iser, Jauss) Cortazar, Calvino and Barthes.
The conjure author: Goytisolo and Auster. The heteronyms: Pessoa and Vian.
02.02. 11. Self-awareness. Metafiction: Ford, Gide, Grass, and Fowles. The Literature of paradoxes and Labyrinths: Borges.
2.2.12. Exacerbated realism. Pessimism: Céline, Bukowski, Miller and Lost Generation: fiction and reality.
2.2.13. The fracture of the literary conventions. Metalepsis and games with the narrative agreement: Chatman and Booth, Unamuno, Gide and Calvin.
2.2. 14. The blurring of generic boundaries: Hemingway. From Pavese to Kundera.
Thesis Novel and philosophy: Sartre.
2.2. 15. The Anticipation Novel and changes in the empirical reference: Orwell and Bradbury.
2.2.16. The Kerouac's spontaneous prose and the Beat Generation.
2.2.17. The raw realism and minimal trends: Carver and Wolf.
2.2.18. The North American Postmodernism: Pynchon and Barth.
2.2.19. The new journalism: Wolfe and Mailer. The non-fiction novel: Capote and Garcia Marquez.
2.2.20. The magical realism: Garcia Marquez. Changes in the relationship between reality and fiction.
The possible worlds: Pavel.
2.2.21. The Interactive Novel. The Computer Narrative: Coover. Hypertext: Landow.
*The full version with the sections: 4. Assessment, 5. Bibliography and teaching resources, 6. Methodology, and 7. Planning of activities is available in the original version.
4. Assessment
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5. Bibliography and teaching resources
5.1. Basic bibliography
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5.2. Complementary bibliography
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5.3. Teaching resources
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6. Metodology
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7. Planning of activities
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