Online Foreign Literature Courses

Hi everyone!

I'm looking for opinions on what the ideal foreign literature course would look like to you. Which authors would you like to study, and which texts; what have you struggled with when studying or reading foreign literature (whether in the original language or in translation); what would you like to learn about in an online literature course? - particularly in relation to the following languages: French, Russian, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Japanese, Chinese, Arabic.


The background:

I studied Russian and Spanish at the University of Oxford, and I have set up my own language education business since graduating. I am going to begin offering online literature courses for a range of world literatures - the first courses to be piloted will be French Literature and Russian Literature.

These will be taught by a PhD student at Oxford or Cambridge University, lessons will be 1.5hrs long on a weekday evening, and courses will generally last between 8-12 weeks.

You won't need to be fluent in the target language or have an extensive knowledge of the literature written in that language to attend the course, as it is primarily targeted towards A Level students who are considering studying languages at university (but it is open to students of all ages, not just those studying at A Level). The aim is to provide students with the opportunity to study the literature of their target language beyond the curriculum, and thus demonstrate a passion for their subject to university admissions officers - while also simply enjoying the pleasures of reading and studying foreign literature! You would learn about the historical, socio-political and biographical contexts relating to major literary works in the target language, while delving into closer reading, literary analysis and critical translation.

Any opinions would be so valuable to me and I'd love to hear what you all think about the idea of online foreign literature courses!

Thanks!