Rewriting the canon: the (graphic) novel

Teacher(s)

Bragard Véronique;

Language

English

Prerequisites

Students have successfully completed the LENG1223 course. 

Main themes

The course covers the history of English literature in the 19th and 20th centuries. It gives an overview of the different literary trends and genres and places them in their socio-cultural context. The course then approaches the question of literary rewriting and its techniques. 
Compulsory readings will illustrate the subject. 
This course is accompanied by a 10-hour tutoring. Tutoring sessions are designed to support students and help them to understand how to read and analyse these texts critically. These sessions can also be highly beneficial for writing the final paper for the b

Learning outcomes

At the end of this learning unit, the student is able to :
1	Identify the typical features of the most important literary genres and trends and to place them in their sociocultural context.
2	They are expected to know the key figures and works from this period of literary history and should have read the novels analysed in class.
3	Analyse, contextualise, and compare the novels studied in class, and rigorously integrate the vocabulary, concepts and methods specific to literary studies.
This learning unit contributes to the development and command of the following skills and learning outcomes of the ELAL programmes: 1.5; 1.6; 2.6; 4.3; 5.6.

Content

Starting with Percival Everett’s 2025 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel James as a rewriting of Twain’s Huckleberry Finn from the point of view of the fugitive slave Jim, this course analyses canonical texts and their rewritings, that is texts that offer re-interpretations and new contextualisations of established narratives. What are the motivations for rewriting major canonical texts? What is added, deleted, expanded upon? This course introduces students to relevant theories while connecting this trend to the dominant literary movements of the 19th & 20th & 21st centuries and their rewriting techniques: from the Victorian to the modernist period, and from postmodern to post- postmodern writers. After an introduction to Victorian times and an in-depth analysis of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847), it examines postcolonial fiction via an analysis of Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea, the famous prequel and response to Jane Eyre. A second module explores Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, one of the most frequently rewritten texts in English literature, paying special attention to the decolonial aspects of its comics adaptations. It then contrasts modernism and postmodernism via a comparison between Virginia Woolf's modernist novel Mrs Dalloway (1925) and Michael Cunningham's postmodern rewriting The Hours (1998). The last module focuses on Wuthering Heights and Caryl Phillips’ polyphonic rewriting The Lost Child as a text that takes Emily Brontë's work as a framework to foreground ongoing cycles of racial discrimination in the UK.

Teaching methods

Lectures; PowerPoint presentations, films, required reading, course notes.
Students prepare readings and questions prior to class time to facilitate discussion. They attend workshops (8 hours) to discuss the novels covered in class as well as their personal assignments (2).

Evaluation methods

In-class tests and oral exam (with one written question) based on the lectures and the required readings. To take the exam, students will have submitted and corrected 2 assignments and one video (shown in class).
Bibliography

Online resources

See moodle page

Bibliography

Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre.  London, Penguin Classics: 2006.
Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea.
Caryl Phillips, The Lost Child. Vintage, 2015.
Anyango and Mayrowitz Heart of Darkness. SelfmadeHero.
Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway. (excerpts on moodle)
Michael Cunningham, The Hours. Fourth Estate, 1999.

Faculty or entity

> ELAL