Contemporary literature and images [ LROM2750 ]

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Critical explanation of the ideological issues in which the distinct stands on the text and the image have their roots.

Exploitation of the contributions of particular semiologies (verbal and visual).

Presentation and testing of the main relational models to analyse works mixing text and image.

Exercises in applied semiology (advertisement, comic books, illustrated press, etc.).

During the 20th century, written culture has been more and more associated with visual culture, whether in popular literary works (illustrated books for children, comic books, newspapers or magazines, advertisement, video clips, etc.) or in "high" literature (illustration, graphic and typographic visualisation, etc.).

The main goal of this course is to give to the students, who are bound to meet this mixing of languages (text+image) in their research or their professional life, a rigorous theoretical and methodological frame which makes possible the analysis of contemporary images and of their frequent interactions with various literary texts, popular or not.

The contribution of this Teaching Unit to the development and command of the skills and learning outcomes of the programme(s) can be accessed at the end of this sheet, in the section entitled “Programmes/courses offering this Teaching Unit”.

Oral examination on the course. Written assignment analysing the juxtaposition of a  (para)literary text and an image  presented by each student in the oral examination.

Lectures, during which theoretical talks will be illustrated with the analysis of works associating image and text.

The course is based on a preliminary analysis of the historico-sociological issues which go with any study of the image and the relationships image-text, as well as an epistemological reflection on the problematic meeting between scriptural meta-language and visual objects (iconic, plastic) which are the subjects of this study.

A critical synthesis of the main theories about the study of the relationship image-text (or about the study of one of these two modes, as far as this study can contribute to the final theoretical development) will be given to the students; it leads to the perfecting of methodological tools likely to be used to analyse the (popular) literary text and contemporary images. The locating, interpretation and confrontation of cultural, ideological and symbolic contents promoted by the textual and iconico-plastic forms will also be given special emphasis.

A selective bibliography is communicated to the students.

Supports : course plan commentary and reading folder.