Description

Cours thématiques d'anglais n°11 : Agatha Christie, From Fiction to Movie Screen: Colonial Settings, Cross-border Travels, Cultural Encounters, and Puzzling Crimes in Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile 

This course explores Agatha Christie’s detective fiction through the lens of its film adaptations, with a focus on Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile. Through close readings and viewings, students will examine how the novels reflect the encounters between characters of different nationalities, classes, and genders against exoticized and colonial backdrops. We will examine how Christie’s fiction engages with interwar anxieties, empire, and mobility, and how the film versions adapt her stories to new political and aesthetic contexts. Drawing on frameworks such as Orientalism, we will critically assess how both texts and films construct “foreign” geographies and cultures, particularly in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Besides, Christie often exaggerated her characters’ social and ethnic stereotypes; we will discuss whether similar traits are also found in the film adaptations. We will also consider the conventions of the detective genre and how Hercule Poirot, as a “foreigner” in British literature, is portrayed across time and media. Finally, students will analyze book covers of different editions and discuss how their symbolism has changed over the years. There will be quizzes and vocabulary exercises to improve their English written and spoken skills. No prior knowledge of the novels and the films is required; we will read and watch extracts together.

MCC

Les épreuves indiquées respectent et appliquent le règlement de votre formation, disponible dans l'onglet Documents de la description de la formation.

Régime d'évaluation

ECI (Évaluation continue intégrale)

Coefficient

1.0

Évaluation initiale / Session principale - Épreuves