Literature and Intermediality

Code:

DELCI001

Acronym:

LeI

Keywords
Classification	Keyword
OFICIAL	Literature and Culture

Instance: 2024/2025 - 1S

Active?	Yes
Responsible unit:	Department of Anglo-American Studies
Course/CS Responsible:	3rd Cycle of Studies in Literary, Cultural and Interart Studies

Cycles of Study/Courses

Acronym	No. of Students	Study Plan	Curricular Years	Credits UCN	Credits ECTS	Contact hours	Total Time
DELCI	0	DELCI - Study Plan	1	-	12	39	324

Teaching language

Portuguese and english
Obs.: ver, em 'Programa', indicações por módulo | check under 'programme' the language specifications for each of the modules

Objectives

This course will extend the students’ critical skills by leading them to discuss some of the ways in which literary texts have historically interacted with a range of other artistic practices. Students will be prompted to understand and employ, with enhanced confidence, the lexical and conceptual apparatus that has accompanied the disciplinary rise of intermediality.

Learning outcomes and competences

By the end of the semester, students should be able to understand and employ, with confidence, some of the lexical and conceptual resources that have accompanied the disciplinary rise of intermediality.

Working method

Presencial

Program

Module 1*:

1. Introduction – Literature and Intermediality: an exploration of foundational issues. 2. Visuality and gender in contemporary poetry – two case studies: Primary sources:
Hughes, Ted (1998). Birthday Letters. London: Faber.
Morrissey, Sinéad (1996). There was Fire in Vancouver. * this module will be taught in English

Module 2*:

Spectator ethics:
In what way will a visitor to an art gallery, the beholder of a statue or anyone who looks at a photograph be affected by what they see – prompted as they are to perceive the world anew, to create new values? By engaging with poems by Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen, a short story by Alexandre Andrade and a ‘fiction-diary’ by Gonçalo M. Tavares, this module ventures an understanding of the ethical values that arise from viewing an artistic image.

Sources:
Andrade, Alexandre (2019), Todos Nós Temos Medo do Vermelho, Amarelo e Azul, Lisboa, Relógio d’Água.
Andresen, Sophia de Mello Breyner (2015), Obra Poética, Lisboa, Assírio & Alvim.
Tavares, Gonçalo M. (2018), Na América, Disse Jonathan. Diário-ficção, Lisboa, Relógio d’Água.
* this module will be taught in Portuguese

Module 3*:

The Coming of the Machine:
In this module we shall read Humphrey Jennings’s Pandaemonium, 1660–1886: The Coming of the Machine as Seen by Contemporary Observers (1985), a compilation of testimonies of the development and cultural impact of the Industrial Revolution, including, poetry, memoirs, newspaper articles and excerpts from novels. Jennings (1907-1950), a painter and filmmaker by trade, enticingly called each text in this collection an “image”, encouraging the reader to approach the book as a documentary film. This mode of filmic reading will guide us through the following topics:

1. Text as image: baroque and neoclassical rhetoric and the concept of vividness in writing about machines (1660-1799).
2. Image as text: 19^th century reactions to the invention of photography and precursors of film (1800-1886).
3. “A secret third thing”: contemporary developments.

* this module will be taught in English

Module 4*:

On Colour and Fiction:
Gustave Flaubert’s provocative colour coding of his novels, Alfred Hitchcock’s pedagogic recommendations on the contrastive use of red in film, Hergé’s accounts of Edgar P. Jacobs’s quixotic search for the perfect lacquered vermilion for the cover of Le Lotus Bleu, or Nagisa Ôshima’s virulent attack on the colour green all depart from a common stance: the recognition of the supreme importance of colours in fiction, both in the creation of stories and in the communication of method and intention. This module proposes to address this issue by offering a historical perusal, from a transmedial perspective, of the language of colour in fiction, concentrating mostly on literature, comics, and cinema. It also aims at uncovering the main purposes and functions of the reliance on colour to convey artistic standpoints, as well as its major impact on storytelling throughout time.

Sources:
Batchelor, David (2000). Chromophobia. London: Reaktion Books.
Brusatin, Manlio (1999). Storia dei colori. Turin: Einaudi.
Dalle Vacche, Angela & Price, Brian (Eds.) (2006). Color, The Film Reader. Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge.
Ripoll, Élodie (2018). Penser la couleur en littérature. Explorations romanesques des Lumières au réalisme. Paris: Classiques Garnier.
Toudoire-Surlapierre, Frédérique (2015). Colorado. Paris: Éditions de Minuit.
* this module will be taught in Portuguese

 

Mandatory literature

Ellestrõm Lars 340; Media borders, multimodality and intermediality. ISBN: 978-0-230-23860-2
Gombrich, E. H.; Art and illusion
Heffernan, James A. W.; Museum of words. ISBN: 0-226-32314-5
Louvel, Liliane; Texte. ISBN: 2868476686
Mitchell, W. J. Thomas, 1942-; Picture theory. ISBN: 0-226-53232-1
Rippl, Gabriele (ed.); Handbook of Intermediality - Literature, Image, Sound, Music, Boston and Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015
Wagner Peter 340; Icons-texts-iconotexts. ISBN: 3-11-014291-0

Comments from the literature

Suggestions for further reading will reflect the particularity of the projects pursued by students attending this course.

Teaching methods and learning activities

As is proper to a doctoral seminar in the Humanities, the methodologies to be implemented in this course will be based on the understanding that the seminar leader and the doctoral students are jointly responsible for the submission of critical contributions, orally and in writing. Seminar sessions will mostly be taken up by oral interventions (either formal or informal) offered by the students; and these will alternate with expository input and critical commentary provided by the seminar leader. Assessment will be based on such contributions, as well as on written submissions (the regularity of which may vary, depending on the research projects in question).

keywords

Humanities > Philosophy > Aesthetics
Humanities > Literature > Literary criticism
Humanities > Arts
Humanities > History > Art History
Humanities > Literature > Comparative literature

Evaluation Type

Distributed evaluation without final exam

Assessment Components

Designation	Weight (%)
Participação presencial	50,00
Trabalho escrito	50,00
Total:	100,00

Amount of time allocated to each course unit

Designation	Time (hours)
Frequência das aulas	45,00
Trabalho de investigação	279,00
Total:	324,00

Eligibility for exams

Active participation (P) in the seminars and submission of short essays (E) will hold equal weight in the calculation of a final grade (F): (P + E) : 2 = F

Calculation formula of final grade

As explained above, active participation (P) in the seminars and submission of short essays (E) will hold equal weight in the calculation of a final grade (F):

(P + E) : 2 = F

Special assessment (TE, DA, ...)

Students whose circumstances entitle them legally to 'special assessment', and manifestly cannot abide the plan of assessment for this course, should approach the course leader in order to learn of alternatives.