|
Lecturer(s)
|
-
Vít Ladislav, PhDr. Ph.D.
|
|
Course content
|
Basic Concepts - space, place. Basic Concepts - landscape, spatial experience, stratification of space. The City and the Country - binary opposition, a pastoralized landscape. Topographical and Prospect poetry: landscape and distance. Suburbia in Literature. Topoi: the island, the mountain, the sea, etc. Topoi: home and homelessness. Ecocriticism - Egocentric vs. Ecocentric view of the physical environment. Smooth and Stratified space - Deleuze and Guattari. Postmodern Spaces and Placelessness, Hyperspace, Cyberspace.
|
|
Learning activities and teaching methods
|
Dialogic (discussion, interview, brainstorming)
- Participation in classes
- 26 hours per semester
- Independent critical reading
- 20 hours per semester
- Preparation for a credit (assessment)
- 20 hours per semester
- Preparation of a presentation (report) in a foreign language
- 16 hours per semester
- Home preparation for classes
- 30 hours per semester
|
|
Learning outcomes
|
The aim of the course is to acquaint students with a selection of approaches to the study of representation of place and space in literary texts. The seminars introduce major conceptualizations of place, space, landscape and their experience by the human subjects (humanistic geography, ecocriticism, phenomenology, R. Williams, Yi-Fu Tuan, T. Cresswell, E. Relph, C. Glotfelty, H. Fromm, G. Garrard, etc.). After outlining their propositions, selected approaches will be applied to chosen literary texts from 18th-20th century. The course is designed to advance students theoretical knowledge and critical skills. The seminars further enhance students' understanding of classicist, romantic and modernist aesthetics. The emphasis on the tension between the conceptualization of place and subjective experience of landscape types (e.g. island, sea, mountain), the course further cultivates students' awareness of human perception of their physical environment (e.g. the city and the country) and of the impact that period aesthetics have on the poetics of particular places or place types (e.g. pastoralisation of landscape). From a practical perspective, the seminars cultivate students' knowledge of Anglo-American literature as well as their interpretative skills within a chosen theortical framework.
Students will develop their textual and interpretative skills. The chronological approach will also allow them to realize the specificity of individual moments of Anglo-American art history through attention to the literary treatment of space. Students will further improve their ability to work with a literary and academic text independently. At the most general level, the course will cultivate the students' awareness of their spatial environment.
|
|
Prerequisites
|
unspecified
|
|
Assessment methods and criteria
|
Home assignment evaluation
1/ active and regular participation in the seminars 2/ detailed knowledge of assigned texts 3/ seminar paper - topic must be discussed with the tutor in advance; 2500 words, typed and printed including a signed declaration of authorship 4/ presentation
|
|
Recommended literature
|
-
CRESSWELL, Tim. Place: A Short Introduction [second edition]. London, United Kingdom: Wiley-Blackwell, 2015.
-
Garrard, Greg. Ecocriticism: The New Critical Idiom. London, New York: Routledge, 2004.
-
Williams Raymond. The Country and the City. Oxford, 1973. ISBN 978-0-19-519810-2.
|