Table of contents

The course is connected to the following study programs

Teaching language

Norwegian/Norwegian. Students must be able to follow the teaching and read the course literature in Norwegian, Danish and Swedish.

Prerequisites

40 ECTS credits in Nordic language and literature or the equivalent. Students must be able to follow lessons in Norwegian and read textbooks in Norwegian, Swedish and Danish.

Learning outcomes

Learning outcome

On successful completion of the course, students should

• have broad knowledge of some central theories of literature, both text-oriented theories (about literary structure), context-oriented theories (about literature and society) and reader-oriented theories (about literature and the reader)

• be able to translate the theories into analytical questions and apply them in text readings

• be able to analyze multimodal texts, where literary expressions interact with images and/or sound

Contents

The course gives an introduction to different types of literary theory, and training in applying them in text analysis. A distinction is made between text-oriented, context-oriented and reader-oriented theories. These are used to highlight and evaluate various aspects of literature, such as literary structure, political tendency, or conventions of interpretation. Students get to work with Nordic, especially Norwegian, literature from different times and in different forms, including multimodal works. They also get practice in assessing which theories may be useful when encountering different types of texts.

Teaching and learning methods

Seminars and group work. The course has an expected workload of 400 hours.

Examination requirements

Approved oral presentation, or equivalent assignment. Further information will be given at the start of the semester.

Examinations

An individual home exam with one week (seven days) submission deadline. Graded grade. The work must be written in Norwegian or another Scandinavian language (Danish or Swedish). In the assessment, emphasis will be placed on academic content, communicative competence and satisfactory language proficiency.

Student evaluation

The person responsible for the course, in consultation with the student representative, decides the method of evaluation and whether the courses will have a midterm- or end of term evaluation, see also the Quality System, section 4.1.

Other information

The course is not part of any study programme at the University of Agder. The course code NOU is used exclusively for exchange students who will include 15 credits (or more) of Norwegian in their education at their home institution. The course cannot be included in the Norwegian language study programme for future teachers in Norwegian primary and secondary school.

Reduction of Credits

This course’s contents overlap with the following courses. A reduction of credits will occur if one of these courses is taken in addition:

Course Reduction of Credits
NO-209 – Literary Theory and Text Analysis. 15
NO-208 – Subject area in Nordic Literature. 10
NOU208 – Subject area in Nordic Literature - for Exchange Students. 10
Last updated from FS (Felles studentsystem) Oct. 15, 2026 10:33:13 AM