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Kies de Nederlandse taal
Course module: UCHUMLIT27
UCHUMLIT27
Literature in Focus: Coetzee
Course info
Course codeUCHUMLIT27
EC7.5
Course goals
Students who have finished this course should have a good understanding of the position of Coetzee’s (earlier) writings in the South African cultural debate as well as in the international market place, and of the implications of censorship for writing serious literature.  They will also understand the themes and methodology of his work, through a detailed textual analysis of six individual novels.
Content
The course offers a thematic case study, that changes every year. This offers students the chance to get acquainted with classical and canonical works more in depth, learning how to do close reading as well as placing the text in its historical context. Students also explore different forms of critical receptions and evaluation through time, disciplinary contexts and scholarly traditions.

Summer 2016 - Coetzee
John Maxwell Coetzee is one of the world’s most prominent living authors, who has twice won the Booker Prize (a rare achievement), and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003. To some extent, the Nobel committee's choice may have been influenced by the way J.M. Coetzee took on the controversial Apartheid regime in his native South Africa. Yet the manner in which he did so was rather oblique,  wrapping his political message in what seemed like universal allegories. As a result, Coetzee has come to be widely esteemed in academic circles throughout the Western world, but  is sometimes frowned upon in South Africa itself. In this course, we shall analyse Coetzee’s writing, with a particular emphasis on the period before he moved from South Africa to Australia. We shall attempt to link his literary aesthetics to their political implications, in the light of the developing cultural and political situation of South Africa at various stages in his career.
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Kies de Nederlandse taal