The question of literary knowledge (Dumoulié, Engel) emerges in the contemporary period, referred to as the "information age," in different terms from the moral and humanist educational capacity with which literature has long been endowed (Badiou, Bouveresse).

In a contemporary context scaffolding the collapse of modern knowledge (Lyotard), many variants of the contemporary novel are championed by the public and critics who question the integration of ways of knowing into the world of fiction. Meta-historical novels (Mertz-Baumgartner) build their narrative on the recall and recording of facts, but with the aim of probing obscure zones and questioning the processes of the fabrication and archiving of History. However, in the thriving genre of contemporary exofiction, "minuscule lives" coexist with biographical supplements and the margins of famous biographees, revealing a desire to revise or uncover counter-examples and the forgotten. Furthermore, literary documentary narratives play on the function of attestation and the challenging of various documents marked by narrative or textual procedures, while, simultaneously, the term "wikinovel" arises (Vilain). Instead of a once productive interaction in the educational possibility between the work of the text and material supplied by the sciences (Marot, Pierssens), the contemporary novel (Blanckeman, Marx) triggers instead a critical unease before the archive (Prstojevic). Thus, we will examine the dramatization of the quest for information that underpins the detective novel (Demanze) and the novel based on current events, other flourishing contemporary examples. Based on a selected corpus aimed at illustrating contemporary genres that insert the document into the novel, while questioning their relationships and raising new questions about literature's ability to convey knowledge, this seminar seeks to explore a wide range of contemporary means of inscribing figures of knowledge.

Students from other graduate programs may submit assignments in English with approval of the instructor.