General information

Course type AMUPIE
Module title Fantastic fiction. A Cultural and Ideological Introduction
Language English
Module lecturer prof. UAM dr hab. Alfons Gregori I Gomis
Lecturer's email alfons@amu.edu.pl
Lecturer position Associate Professor / prof. ucz.
Faculty Faculty of Modern Languages and Literatures
Semester 2023/2024 (winter)
Duration 30
ECTS 4
USOS code 09-FFCII-11

Timetable

Friday, 9:45-11:15

Collegium Novum (al. Niepodległości 4), room 6A

Module aim (aims)

Pre-requisites in terms of knowledge, skills and social competences (where relevant)

Readiness to discuss texts in class, as well as basic terms of literary criticism and theory. English at B2 level. 

Syllabus

Week 1. A theoretical approach to the classical fantastic

Week 2. E.T.A. Hoffmann: “The Sandman”

Week 3. Edgar Allan Poe: “William Wilson”, “Berenice”, “The Fall of the House of Usher”.

Week 4. Guy de Maupassant: “Magnetism”, “The Apparition”, “The Horla”

Week 5. Ambrose Bierce “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”; M.R. James: “Lost Hearts”, “A View from a Hill”, “Casting the Runes”

Week 6. Emilia Pardo Bazán: “The Woman Who Came Back to Life”, “The Talisman”; Miguel de Unamuno: “The Man Who Buried Himself”

Week 7. Arthur Machen: “The Inmost Light”; H.P. Lovecraft: “The Call of Cthulhu”

Week 8. A theoretical approach to the contemporary fantastic. Franz Kafka: Metamorphosis

Week 9. Juan José Arreola: “The Switchman”, “A Pact with the Devil”, “I’m Telling You the Truth”

Week 10. Pere Calders: “The Domestic Tree”, “The Desert”, “The Streak and the Wish”

Week 11. Julio Cortázar: “House Taken Over”, “Letter to a Young Lady in Paris”, “Continuity of Parks”, “Axolotl”.

Week 12. Jorge Luis Borges: “The Other”, “The Book of Sand”, “Funes the Memorious”

Week 13. Jorge Luis Borges: “The Library of Babel”, “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbius Tertius”, “The Circular Ruins”

Week 14. Javier Marías: “Gualta”, “Lord Rendall’s Song”, “The Resignation Letter of Señor de Santiesteban”

Week 15. Final exam.

 

Assessment overview:

- Final exam: 40% 

- Classroom discussion: 40%

- Presentation in class: 20%

Reading list

Apter, T.E. (1982). Fantasy Literature: An Approach to Reality. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Armitt, Lucie. Fantasy Fiction: An Introduction. Continuum, 2005.

Gregori, Alfons (2018). “Crossing Impossible Boundaries? Fantastic Narrative and Ideology.” Exploring the Fantastic: Genre, Ideology, and Popular Culture (117-140). Ed. by Ina Batzke & al. Bielefeld: Transcript.

Jackson, Rosemary (1988). Fantasy: The literature of subversion. London / New York: Routledge.

Mücke, Dorothea E. von (2003). The Seduction of the Occult and the Rise of the Fantastic Tale. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Roas, David (2018). Behind the Frontiers of the Real: A Definition of the Fantastic. Cham: Palgrave Pivot.

Siebers, Tobin (1984). The Romantic Fantastic. Ithaca, New York / London: Cornell University Press.

Todorov, Tzvetan (1975). The Fantastic. A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre (R. Howard [trans.]). Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press.

Traill, Nancy H. (1996). Possible Worlds of the Fantastic: The Rise of the Paranormal in Fiction. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.