DOCSLIB.ORG

Presenting Gender in Surrealist Film

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text

Load more

Border Crossings: (Re)presenting Gender in Surrealist Film Martin Darren Thomas Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Queen Mary, University of London 2014 1 Statement of Originality I, Martin Darren Thomas, confirm that the research included within this thesis is my own work or that where it has been carried out in collaboration with, or supported by others, that this is duly acknowledged below and my contribution indicated. Previously published material is also acknowledged below. I attest that I have exercised reasonable care to ensure that the work is original, and does not to the best of my knowledge break any UK law, infringe any third party’s copyright or other Intellectual Property Right, or contain any confidential material. I accept that the College has the right to use plagiarism detection software to check the electronic version of the thesis. I confirm that this thesis has not been previously submitted for the award of a degree by this or any other university. The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without the prior written consent of the author. Signature: M D Thomas Date: 27.01.14 Details of collaboration and publications: Not Applicable 2 Acknowledgements I owe a debt of thanks to Professor Elza Adamowicz and Doctor Krzysztof Fijalkowski for their patient and insightful supervision and unceasing support throughout this thesis. My sincere thanks go to South Essex College, who part funded my research, with a special debt of thanks to Kathy Mulvey, who helped make this dream a reality, as well as my colleagues who have helped and encouraged me along the way. I am grateful to all those who contributed their time, energy and enthusiasm to the making of The Dream Key cycle and in particular Paul Cousins. Heartfelt thanks to my partner, Megan, my family and friends, who have provided constant encouragement and love over the past seven years and never lost faith in me. 3 Abstract This thesis is in two parts: a theoretical section (60%), which provides an analysis of gender identity in Surrealist film through consideration of a range of Surrealist films; and a practical section (40%), consisting of a body of original creative work (collage, film and assemblage), which builds on and is in dialogue with the theoretical insights of the research. Transformation is seen as central to a mapping and remapping of the spaces, (supposed) limits and frontiers of Surrealist notions of gender identity. In particular this thesis examines how Surrealist film makers engage with representations of men and women: problematising any single or unitary (fixed) reading but rather blurring boundaries between masculine / feminine (as process / flux) in order to deconstruct them, with the ultimate aim of criticising a society that encourages the positioning of men and women according to (binarised) patriarchal discourses. I examine the implications of these 'gender crossings' for the spectator by developing the concept of 'bisexual switching' – which posits a mobile spectator who actively negotiates the various (gender) positions / identities in a kind of dialogue with the text and film maker. Practice, is understood here as a dynamic, integral part of the production of meaning, providing new ways of reflecting upon texts and the processes (such as spectatorship) by which we engage with them. It is argued that this approach is in keeping with the notion of Surrealism as a form of research conducted by artist-researchers, wherein the artworks created are not to be viewed in aesthetic terms but rather as research tools or documents of the research. Following the discussion of the case study films I engage with my own practice in relation to the former, as a series of interlocking dialogues, confirming and challenging the findings of the written thesis (and practice), offering new perspectives on gender identity in Surrealist film. 4 Table of Contents Title Page...............................................................................................................................1 Statement of Originality ...................................................................................................... 2 Acknowledgements .............................................................................................................. 3 Abstract ................................................................................................................................. 4 Introduction: Real dreams beyond the border: towards a Surrealist film practice .......... 9 1. Objectives .......................................................................................................................... 9 2 Key Concepts: Transformation, Bisexuality, Fantasy ...................................................... 11 a) Transformation and Surrealist Film.............................................................................12 b) Bisexuality ................................................................................................................... 14 c) Fantasy, Film and Surrealism ...................................................................................... 19 3. Critical Review ................................................................................................................ 21 a) Writings on Surrealist Film.......................................................................................... 21 b) Gender in Surrealism ................................................................................................... 26 4. Film Corpus ..................................................................................................................... 33 5. Methodology .................................................................................................................... 35 a) General ......................................................................................................................... 35 b) Gender Theory / Feminist writings .............................................................................. 37 c) Spectatorship ................................................................................................................ 41 6 Summary of Chapters ....................................................................................................... 44 Chapter 1: Transforming gender and gender transformations in Un Chien andalou .... 46 Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 46 1. 'The Dance of genders': Introduction ............................................................................... 48 2. Gender shifting................................................................................................................. 50 3. Humour ............................................................................................................................ 60 4. Realist narrative ............................................................................................................... 61 5. The parody of traditional gender roles ............................................................................. 64 6. Music................................................................................................................................ 68 7. Re-reading the 'dance of genders' sequence ..................................................................... 71 8. Female Agency ................................................................................................................ 72 9. Masculinity in crisis ......................................................................................................... 74 10. Ending / End-game ........................................................................................................ 76 5 Chapter 2 'Rrose c'est la vie' or a Rose by another name: desire and becoming (in) Joseph Cornell's Rose Hobart............................................................................................... 81 Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 81 1. Source material: East of Borneo ...................................................................................... 84 2. Cornell, collage and Rose Hobart .................................................................................... 88 3. Concealment .................................................................................................................... 91 4. Doubling .......................................................................................................................... 94 5. Stargazing ........................................................................................................................ 97 6. Soundtrack ..................................................................................................................... 103 7. Convulsive identity ........................................................................................................ 106 8. Eclipse ............................................................................................................................ 109 Chapter 3: 'Beauty killed the beast': uncanny transformations of the monstrous and the marvellous in Les Yeux sans visage ...................................................................................
Recommended publications
  • Extreme Art Film: Text, Paratext and DVD Culture Simon Hobbs

    Extreme Art Film: Text, Paratext and DVD Culture Simon Hobbs

    Extreme Art Film: Text, Paratext and DVD Culture Simon Hobbs The thesis is submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of the University of Portsmouth. September 2014 Declaration Whilst registered as a candidate for the above degree, I have not been registered for any other research award. The results and conclusions embodied in this thesis are the work of the named candidate and have not been submitted for any other academic award. Word count: 85,810 Abstract Extreme art cinema, has, in recent film scholarship, become an important area of study. Many of the existing practices are motivated by a Franco-centric lens, which ultimately defines transgressive art cinema as a new phenomenon. The thesis argues that a study of extreme art cinema needs to consider filmic production both within and beyond France. It also argues that it requires an historical analysis, and I contest the notion that extreme art cinema is a recent mode of Film production. The study considers extreme art cinema as inhabiting a space between ‘high’ and ‘low’ art forms, noting the slippage between the two often polarised industries. The study has a focus on the paratext, with an analysis of DVD extras including ‘making ofs’ and documentary featurettes, interviews with directors, and cover sleeves. This will be used to examine audience engagement with the artefacts, and the films’ position within the film market. Through a detailed assessment of the visual symbols used throughout the films’ narrative images, the thesis observes the manner in which they engage with the taste structures and pictorial templates of art and exploitation cinema.
  • Missions and Film Jamie S

    Missions and Film Jamie S

    Missions and Film Jamie S. Scott e are all familiar with the phenomenon of the “Jesus” city children like the film’s abused New York newsboy, Little Wfilm, but various kinds of movies—some adapted from Joe. In Susan Rocks the Boat (1916; dir. Paul Powell) a society girl literature or life, some original in conception—have portrayed a discovers meaning in life after founding the Joan of Arc Mission, variety of Christian missions and missionaries. If “Jesus” films while a disgraced seminarian finds redemption serving in an give us different readings of the kerygmatic paradox of divine urban mission in The Waifs (1916; dir. Scott Sidney). New York’s incarnation, pictures about missions and missionaries explore the East Side mission anchors tales of betrayal and fidelity inTo Him entirely human question: Who is or is not the model Christian? That Hath (1918; dir. Oscar Apfel), and bankrolling a mission Silent movies featured various forms of evangelism, usually rekindles a wealthy couple’s weary marriage in Playthings of Pas- Protestant. The trope of evangelism continued in big-screen and sion (1919; dir. Wallace Worsley). Luckless lovers from different later made-for-television “talkies,” social strata find a fresh start together including musicals. Biographical at the End of the Trail mission in pictures and documentaries have Virtuous Sinners (1919; dir. Emmett depicted evangelists in feature films J. Flynn), and a Salvation Army mis- and television productions, and sion worker in New York’s Bowery recent years have seen the burgeon- district reconciles with the son of the ing of Christian cinema as a distinct wealthy businessman who stole her genre.
  • Impassive Modernism in Arabic and Hebrew Literatures

    Impassive Modernism in Arabic and Hebrew Literatures

    UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Against the Flow: Impassive Modernism in Arabic and Hebrew Literatures A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature by Shir Alon 2017 © Copyright by Shir Alon 2017 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Against the Flow: Impassive Modernism in Arabic and Hebrew Literatures by Shir Alon Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature University of California, Los Angeles, 2017 Professor Gil Hochberg, Co-Chair Professor Nouri Gana, Co-Chair Against the Flow: Impassive Modernism in Arabic and Hebrew Literatures elaborates two interventions in contemporary studies of Middle Eastern Literatures, Global Modernisms, and Comparative Literature: First, the dissertation elaborates a comparative framework to read twentieth century Arabic and Hebrew literatures side by side and in conversation, as two literary cultures sharing, beyond a contemporary reality of enmity and separation, a narrative of transition to modernity. The works analyzed in the dissertation, hailing from Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, Egypt, and Tunisia, emerge against the Hebrew and Arabic cultural and national renaissance movements, and the establishment of modern independent states in the Middle East. The dissertation stages encounters between Arabic and Hebrew literary works, exploring the ii parallel literary forms they develop in response to shared temporal narratives of a modernity outlined elsewhere and already, and in negotiation with Orientalist legacies. Secondly, the dissertation develops a generic-formal framework to address the proliferation of static and decadent texts emerging in a cultural landscape of national revival and its aftermaths, which I name impassive modernism. Viewed against modernism’s emphatic features, impassive modernism is characterized by affective and formal investment in stasis, immobility, or immutability: suspension in space or time and a desire for nonproductivity.
  • The Greek and the Roman Novel. Parallel Readings

    The Greek and the Roman Novel. Parallel Readings

    Leering for the Plot: Visual Curiosity in Apuleius and Others KIRK FREUDENBURG Yale University Winkler’s Auctor and Actor taught us to pay close attention to how listeners listen in Apuleius’s Metamorphoses, and how readers (featured as charac- ters) go about the act of interpreting, often badly, inside the novel’s many inset tales. Scenes of hermeneutical activity, he shows, have implications for readers on the outside looking in. My approach in this paper is largely in the same vein, but with a different emphasis. I want to watch the book’s inset watchers, not ‘rather than’ but ‘in addition to’ reading its readers. Expanding upon two recent articles by Niall Slater, I will focus on how their watching is figured, and what it does to them, by transfixing and transforming them in various regular (as we shall see) and suggestively ‘readable’ ways.1 My main point will concern the pleasures of the text that are produced and set out for critical inspection by the novel’s scenes of scopophilia, scenes that invite us to feast our eyes on characters happily abandoned to their desires. They draw us in to watch, and secretly enjoy the show. And in doing that they have the potential to tell us something not just about the bewitching powers of the book as a lush meadow of enticements, but about ourselves as stubborn mules who are easily enticed by its many pleasurable divertissements. Curi- osity is a problem in the book, something we load on Lucius’ back as his famous problem. That is clear enough.
  • Women in Geoffrey Chaucer's the Canterbury Tales: Woman As A

    Women in Geoffrey Chaucer's the Canterbury Tales: Woman As A

    1 Masaryk University Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies English Language and Literature Vladislava Vaněčková Women in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales: Woman as a Narrator, Woman in the Narrative Master's Diploma Thesis Supervisor: Doc. Milada Franková, Csc., M.A. 2007 2 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography. ¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼.. 3 Table of Contents 1. Introduction 4 2. Medieval Society 7 2.1 Chaucer in His Age 9 2.2 Chaucer's Pilgrims 11 3. Woman as a Narrator: the Voiced Silence of the Female Pilgrims 15 3.1 The Second Nun 20 3.2 The Prioress 27 3.3 The Wife of Bath 34 4. Woman in Male Narratives: theIdeal, the Satire, and Nothing in Between 50 4.1 The Knight's Tale, the Franklin's Tale: the Courtly Ideal 51 4.1.1 The Knight's Tale 52 4.1.2 The Franklin's Tale 56 4.2 The Man of Law's Tale, the Clerk's Tale: the Christian Ideal 64 4.2.1 The Man of Law's Tale 66 4.2.2 The Clerk's Tale 70 4.3 The Miller's Tale, the Shipman's Tale: No Ideal at All 78 4.3.1 The Miller's Tale 80 4.3.2 The Shipman's Tale 86 5. Conclusion 95 6. Works Cited and Consulted 100 4 1. Introduction Geoffrey Chaucer is a major influential figure in the history of English literature. His The Canterbury Tales are read and reshaped to suit its modern audiences.
  • Files/2014 Women and the Big Picture Report.Pdf>, Accessed 6 September 2018

    Files/2014 Women and the Big Picture Report.Pdf>, Accessed 6 September 2018

    The neuroscientific uncanny: a filmic investigation of twenty-first century hauntology GENT, Susannah <http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0091-2555> Available from the Sheffield Hallam University Research Archive (SHURA) at: http://shura.shu.ac.uk/26099/ A Sheffield Hallam University thesis This thesis is protected by copyright which belongs to the author. The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author. When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given. Please visit http://shura.shu.ac.uk/26099/ and http://shura.shu.ac.uk/information.html for further details about copyright and re-use permissions. THE NEUROSCIENTIFIC UNCANNY: A FILMIC INVESTIGATION OF TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY HAUNTOLOGY Susannah Gent A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of Sheffield Hallam University for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy October 2019 Candidate Declaration I hereby declare that: 1. I have not been enrolled for another award of the University, or other academic or professional organisation, whilst undertaking my research degree. 2. None of the material contained in the thesis has been used in any other submission for an academic award. 3. I am aware of and understand the University’s policy on plagiarism and certify that this thesis is my own work. The use of all published or other sources of material consulted have been properly and fully acknowledged. 4. The work undertaken towards the thesis has been conducted in accordance with the SHU Principles of Integrity in Research and the SHU Research Ethics Policy.
  • The Prologue to Un Chien Andalou As Precursor to the Contemporary Poetics of Antivisuality and Blindness

    The Prologue to Un Chien Andalou As Precursor to the Contemporary Poetics of Antivisuality and Blindness

    OXYMORONIC GAMES IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE, THE PROLOGUE TO UN CHIEN ANDALOU AS PRECURSOR TO THE CONTEMPORARY POETICS OF ANTIVISUALITY AND BLINDNESS Javier Herrera Filmoteca Española – Madrid In 1986, taking off from several texts by Bataille, specifically his essays on Lascaux and Manet as well some of his articles from Documents (those on Picasso, Van Gogh and the eye – Un chien andalou ), Rosalind Krauss published an article titled “Antivision” (1986) in which she updated several of the more original concepts of Bataille’s thinking, among which, besides formlessness, acéphale and self-mutilation, are found the ideas of obscurity and blindness. For Krauss, who some years later contributed with extraordinary critical fortune with her fundamental work The unconscious optics (1999), Bataille’s great contribution consists of, with his novel conceptual arsenal, questioning from the start the ocularcentrism dominant in Western civilization (Jay 2003), and, along the way, achieving modernity’s overcoming of visuality itself. Thus, in modern painting, to consider one example, from Van Gogh, Picasso and the surrealists on, the notion of progress no longer makes sense since what is witnessed is a regress to humanity’s origins where the child, the primitive, and the mad become models for new gazes, and, thus, they become installed within artistic rhetoric through the dislocation of forms, the destructive spirit, otherness, and the descent into monstrosity, and as a consequence of all of it comes the negation of the body, as well as the gaze, as a model for equilibrium. All this translates -and this is Krauss’ main point- into a growing tendency to renounce visuality as the most precious gift and to turn to interventions and acts which negate its very essence and even its existence.
  • Guy Debord and the Situationist International: Texts and Documents, Edited by Tom Mcdonough G D   S I

    Guy Debord and the Situationist International: Texts and Documents, Edited by Tom Mcdonough G D   S I

    G D S I OCTOBER BOOKS Rosalind E. Krauss, Annette Michelson, Yve-Alain Bois, Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, Hal Foster, Denis Hollier, and Mignon Nixon, editors Broodthaers, edited by Benjamin H. D. Buchloh AIDS: Cultural Analysis/Cultural Activism, edited by Douglas Crimp Aberrations, by Jurgis Baltrusˇaitis Against Architecture: The Writings of Georges Bataille, by Denis Hollier Painting as Model, by Yve-Alain Bois The Destruction of Tilted Arc: Documents, edited by Clara Weyergraf-Serra and Martha Buskirk The Woman in Question, edited by Parveen Adams and Elizabeth Cowie Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century, by Jonathan Crary The Subjectivity Effect in Western Literary Tradition: Essays toward the Release of Shakespeare’s Will, by Joel Fineman Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture, by Slavoj Zˇizˇek Cinema, Censorship, and the State: The Writings of Nagisa Oshima, by Nagisa Oshima The Optical Unconscious, by Rosalind E. Krauss Gesture and Speech, by André Leroi-Gourhan Compulsive Beauty, by Hal Foster Continuous Project Altered Daily: The Writings of Robert Morris, by Robert Morris Read My Desire: Lacan against the Historicists, by Joan Copjec Fast Cars, Clean Bodies: Decolonization and the Reordering of French Culture, by Kristin Ross Kant after Duchamp, by Thierry de Duve The Duchamp Effect, edited by Martha Buskirk and Mignon Nixon The Return of the Real: The Avant-Garde at the End of the Century, by Hal Foster October: The Second Decade, 1986–1996, edited by Rosalind Krauss, Yve-Alain Bois, Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, Hal Foster, Denis Hollier, and Silvia Kolbowski Infinite Regress: Marcel Duchamp 1910–1941, by David Joselit Caravaggio’s Secrets, by Leo Bersani and Ulysse Dutoit Scenes in a Library: Reading the Photograph in the Book, 1843–1875, by Carol Armstrong Neo-Avantgarde and Culture Industry: Essays on European and American Art from 1955 to 1975, by Benjamin H.
  • The Case of Luis Buñuel's Un Chien Andalou

    The Case of Luis Buñuel's Un Chien Andalou

    Palaver Palaver 7 n.s. (2018), n. 2, 205-226 e-ISSN 2280-4250 DOI 10.1285/i22804250v7i2p205 http://siba-ese.unisalento.it, © 2018 Università del Salento James Kendall London Film School / London Metropolitan University (London) Interpretative strategies in Film Studies: The case of Luis Buñuel’s Un Chien Andalou Abstract The following article frames a particular case study: the role of interpretative strategies within the realm of film studies. It will examine the diverse levels (cultural, linguistic and semiotic) at which interpreting operates, including transposition, transcreation, and adaptation. It will look at a specific film, one that jettisons classical interpretative approaches: Luis Bunuel’s Un Chien Andalou. The analysis that follows will entail a close examination of the film text. The corpus of this article in fact will dwell upon a whole matrix of formal features (editing, camera movement, framing) and how such aspects of mise-en-scène open up interpretative possibilities on an ontological as well as an epistemological level. Keywords: film interpretation, aesthetics, film studies, textual analysis, Surrealism, Buñuel 205 James Kendall UN CHIEN ANDALOU AS A LANDMARK IN FILM HISTORY “Our only rule was very simple: No idea or image that might lend itself to a rational explanation of any kind would be accepted.”1 Un Chien Andalou, made by Luis Buñuel in 1929 in collaboration with Salvador Dalí, is one of the most analysed films in film history, studied by an enormous amount of critics and specialists from different schools and cultural backgrounds. Buñuel’s short film has been considered as the avatar of American independent film (1968, 56), the initiator of the surrealist model in commercial film (1970, 44) and of modem American cinema in general (1969, 66).
  • OCR AS and a Level Film Studies

    OCR AS and a Level Film Studies

    Qualification Accredited AS and A LEVEL Delivery Guide FILM STUDIES H010, H410 For first teaching in 2017 European Cinema History (Component 1: Section B) Version 1 www.ocr.org.uk/filmstudies AS and A Level Film Studies Delivery Guide AS and A LEVEL FILM STUDIES A guide to approaching the teaching of the content related to the experimental and Curriculum Content 3 film movement set films in the European Cinema History section of Component 1. Delivery guides are designed to represent a body of knowledge about teaching a particular topic and contain: Thinking Conceptually 4 • Content: A clear outline of the content covered by the delivery guide; • Thinking Conceptually: Expert guidance on the key concepts involved, common difficulties students may have, approaches to teaching that can help students Thinking Contextually 5 understand these concepts and how this topic links conceptually to other areas of the subject; Experimental Film 5 • Thinking Contextually: A range of suggested teaching activities using a variety of (Un Chien Andalou and L’Age D’or) Introduction themes so that different activities can be selected which best suit particular classes, learning styles or teaching approaches. German Expressionism – 6 The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari If you have any feedback on this Delivery Guide or suggestions for other resources you would like OCR to develop, please email [email protected] German Expressionism – Nosferatu 7 German Expressionism – Metropolis 8 French New Wave – The 400 Blows 9 French New Wave – À Bout de Souffle 10 French New Wave – Cleo from 5 to 7 11 Learner Resources – Activities 12 DISCLAIMER This resource was designed using the most up to date information from the specification at the time it was published.
  • The Watts Towers from Eyesore to Icon: Race and the Spaces of Outsider Art

    The Watts Towers from Eyesore to Icon: Race and the Spaces of Outsider Art

    The Watts Towers from Eyesore to Icon: Race and the Spaces of Outsider Art By Emma R. Silverman A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History of Art and the Designated Emphasis in Women, Gender, and Sexuality in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Julia Bryan-Wilson, Chair Professor Margaretta M. Lovell Professor Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby Professor Charles L. Briggs Summer 2018 Abstract The Watts Towers from Eyesore to Icon: Race and the Spaces of Outsider Art by Emma R. Silverman Doctor of Philosophy in History of Art and the Designated Emphasis in Women, Gender and Sexuality University of California, Berkeley Professor Julia Bryan-Wilson, Chair Starting around 1921, Sabato (Sam) Rodia (1879–1965) began to build an unusual environment in his backyard in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. Although he had no formal training in art or architecture, Rodia used concrete-covered steel embellished with intricate mosaics of tile, shell, and glass to create a series of elaborate sculptures, including three central towers that rise nearly one hundred feet in height. For over three decades Rodia’s creation received scant public recognition, and in 1954 Rodia left Los Angeles, never to return. The story of how a single individual worked alone to create such a monumental structure is awe-inspiring; however, the life the site took on after Rodia’s departure is equally remarkable. In the postwar period California’s perceived provinciality relegated it to the fringes of the New York-centered art world.
  • 27833 - English Literature IV

    27833 - English Literature IV

    Year : 2020/21 27833 - English Literature IV Syllabus Information Academic Year: 2020/21 Subject: 27833 - English Literature IV Faculty / School: 103 - Facultad de Filosofía y Letras Degree: 416 - Degree in English ECTS: 6.0 Year: 3 Semester: Second semester Subject Type: Compulsory Module: --- 1.General information 1.1.Aims of the course 1.2.Context and importance of this course in the degree 1.3.Recommendations to take this course 2.Learning goals 2.1.Competences 2.2.Learning goals 2.3.Importance of learning goals 3.Assessment (1st and 2nd call) 3.1.Assessment tasks (description of tasks, marking system and assessment criteria) 4.Methodology, learning tasks, syllabus and resources 4.1.Methodological overview All courses in the discipline Literatura inglesa (English Literature) in the Grado en Estudios Ingleses (Degree in English Studies) comprise a theoretical and a practical part. The theoretical part consists on lectures providing basic information on the literary period in question, particularly on its movements, trends, and most relevant authors and works. Practice sessions will be devoted to the commentary and analysis of quotations, fragments and compulsory texts and will actively involve students, who must have read and worked on the texts prior to the lesson. As has been explained before, students are offered the possibility of writing an optional individual essay under the supervision of the teacher, who will provide guidance and will be available during office hours in order to deal with questions, help with the planning of the essay and the autonomous learning process. All sessions will be in English and all compulsory texts must be read in English, as well, and in an unabridged version.