210.610 Methods of Foreign Language Teaching
This course is required for all incoming graduate students
in French, Italian, and Spanish.
Beauvois 212.692 Research Methods
Waterman 212.673 Graduate Seminar in Film and Film Theory: European
This course examines the notion of the “auteur,” which has been in use for European filmmakers since the New Wave (1959 – 1963). After studying the theory of the auteur since the 1960s, we will focus on two directors from each of four national traditions: Federico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni from Italy; Jean-Luc Godard and Agnès Varda from France; Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Werner Herzog from Germany; and Julio Medem and Pedro Almodóvar from Spain. At stake will be the historical circumstances of the rise of the European “auteur,” with special regard to factors that differentiate the national traditions in question. Theoretical readings will include Cinema 2: the Time-Image (Gilles Deleuze) and The Cinema Effect (Sean Cubitt).
Wegenstein 210.601 French for Reading and Translation
Intensive study of French grammar structure plus experience
in reading and translating expository prose. Students
do independent work (vocabulary acquisition and
translation) in their particular field of study. Designed
for graduate students in other departments who need to
complete a language requirement in French. Open to
undergraduates only with the permission of the language
coordinator.
Staff 3 credits 212.600 Reading and Seeing in Medieval Lyric Poetry
Theories of Reading and a new poetry of love evolved
simultaneously in 12th-century France. Both stressed the
role of vision and cognition. The seminar will examine
medieval reading theory in conjunction with practices
of writing and painting in 13th-century troubadour and
trouvère chansonniers (manuscript song-books).
Nichols 212.601 Varieties of Theater and Theatricality in the
Middle Ages
Nichols 212.602 Marie de France, Mythology, and the
“Invention” of Writing
A study of the way Marie de France, followed by other
writers of Breton lays, tapped a new vein of mythology in
12th-century France, with the consequences of a novel
consciousness of the written text in French letters. Readings:
Marie de France Lais, Fables, Martianus Capella
De Nuptiis Philogiae et Mercurii, and diverse Breton lays,
including Le lai d’lgnauré.
Nichols 212.603 Medieval Poetics and the Invention of
“Historical” Narrative
A study of the theory, practice, and meaning of narrative
in the Middle Ages through contemporary texts and
treatises. We will examine what was meant by “history”
and see why it was closely associated to different narrative
and poetic modes. Comparison with classical treatises
and examples will help to situate medieval theory and
practice.
Nichols 212.604 Vision and Illumination in Le Roman de la Rose
A study of the role of visual theories as developed and
utilized by Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun in the
13th-century Roman de la Rose. Central to the seminar will
be study of illuminated manuscripts of the Rose and the
problematics of text and image they raise.
Nichols 212.605 Nom et poesie au Moyen Age
Nichols 212.606 Modes of Poetic Knowledge in the Middle Ages
The seminar will examine medieval innovations in knowledge, particularly theories of vision and perspective, moral philosophy, and esthetics as they were elaborated by thinkers like Roger Bacon, Grosseteste, Aquinus, Dante and others. We will also study the impact of such knowledge on the development and evolution of important literary works from the 12th to the 14th centuries.
Nichols 212.608 Thinking With Dreams: Poetry & Philosophy in the Middle Ages
Medieval authors composed dream fictions as a useful framework for mediating between the everyday world and the otherworld of divine providence. Conceived as a liminal space where the virtual might confront the real, dream worlds offered a mechanism for epistemological debate ranging from pious allegory to bold exposition of heterodox thought. The seminar will look at classical theories of dreams from Plato & Artistotle to Cicero, then read key works of the genre like Macrobius’s Commentaire sur le songe de Scipion, the anonymous Vision de Saint Paul, Guillaume de Loris’s & Jean de Meun’s Le Roman de la Rose, Christine de Pisan’s La Cité des Dames, Villon’s Le Testament.
Nichols 212.609 Le Theatre Et Ses Censuers (XVIIe Siecle)
Far from being the expression of wisdom and order, as literary history would have it, XVIIth century theatre, either tragic or comic, challenged the morality and rationality of the time. Its assault on conventional values, whether those of religion, of sex or of poetics, upset censors of different sorts, who tried to tame or silence it. We will meditate on the flamboyance and courage of the great playwrights and show that their plays allow the expression of what is usually repressed – the world of desires and fantasms. The quarrels around Corneille’s Le Cid and Molière’s infamous trilogy (L’Ecole des femmes, Tartuffe, Don Juan) will be centre stage. Under such pressure, self-censorship was also active; the balance between provocation and restraint will be studied through the example of Racine. The seminar will be held in French.
Jeanneret 212.610 The Sacred and the Secular : The Manuscript Codex 1200-1500
This course discusses manuscript production and consumption in the high middle ages, including relations of text and image. It concentrates particularly on manuscript evidence for reading practices, in monastic, private and courtly contexts. After the initial meeting (September 11) classes will be held in the Walters Art Museum, where students will be able to examine original manuscript material, and will be introduced to the many different ways in which manuscripts can be displayed and studied to provide insights into medieval art and culture.
Nichols/Noel 212.612 Theories of Illusion in the 17th- and 18th-
Century French Novel
An exploration of the theory and practice of seventeenth-
and eighteenth- century fiction at a time when
the practice of the novel always included a theoretical,
self-reflexive mode that underscored radical transformations
in the genre. Focus on the relationship between
genre, truth, reality and the reading public; between the
discourse of the novel and that of history; between the
high style of the Romanesque and its parodies. Readings
from d’Urfé, Sorel, Furetière, Chapelain, Madeleine de
Scudéry, Boileau, Marivaux, Crébillon, Diderot.
Russo 212.613 Marivaux et L’Esthetiques des Modernes
A travers la lecture des oeuvres les plus significative dans
la vaste production théâtrale, narrative et journalistique
de Marivaux, nous allons explorer l’écriture des Lumières
avant la montée des philosophes, en particulier les rapports
entre les Lumiéres et ce qu’on nomme l’esthétique
rococo. Parmi les sujets traités: les suites de la querelle
des Anciens et des Modernes; le burlesque et la parodie;
la controverse du marivaudage et du néologisme; la
théâtralisation de l’écriture; le bel esprit et la critique du
sublime.
Russo 212.614 Morality of Spectatorship
Russo 212.616 Rousseau
Anderson 212.617 Eighteenth-Century French Theater
The development of the drame bourgeois and the theater
criticism of the French Enlightenment. Authors to
be studied include Racine, Le Sage, Marivaux, Voltaire,
Diderot, and Beaumarchais.
Anderson 212.618 Buffon
Buffon’s project of writing natural history was tightly
linked to the literary, philosophical, and natural philosophical
context of the Enlightenment. His work will be
used as a starting point to discuss the interrelationships
of literature and science at a moment when they were
not distinguished from each other according to the same
criteria that we use today.
Anderson 212.619 The Aesthetics of the French Enlightenment
Anderson 212.620 The Encyclopédie
In its attempt to realize fully the potential of a group
description of knowledge, the Encyclopédie of Diderot and
d’Alembert displays the program of the philosophes in a
particularly intense and idiosyncratic form. This intellectual
dialogue will be studied through the investigation
of several different subjects treated in the Encyclopédie;
for example, the theory of the encyclopedia itself, history,
natural history, literature, medicine, theories of
language.
Anderson 212.621 Flaubert, From Bovary To Bouvard
The seminar will propose a reading of the first published novel of Flaubert, Madame Bovary and the last novel he was writing when he died, Bouvard et Pécuchet. The others works by Flaubert will be occasionaly considered. The new fiction patterns that Flaubert invented, the deep irony of those novels, the narrative integration of knowledge and sciences, will be ones of the main topics that will be examined in those two novels. Drafts, scenarios, manuscript materials will be examined to stress on the strongness that Flaubert gave to the art of Prose .October 2006 will be the 150 years anniversary of Madame Bovary.
Flaubert, Madame Bovary, Le Livre de poche classique
Flaubert, Bouvard et Pécuchet, GF Flammarion
Neefs 212.622 Representing and Thinking Equality in the
19th Century: Memories of the Revolution
Study of 19th-century texts by novelists, poets, historians,
and philosophers about the French Revolution, focusing
on episodes, texts, and representations concerned by the
modern versions of the question of equality.
Neefs 212.623 The Narrative Prose as a Modern Art: From
Flaubert to Proust
Seminar will examine the new aesthetic purpose of the
narrative prose, from Flaubert to Proust, also considering
the importance of prose in poetry (Baudelaire, Rimbaud,
Mallarmé), including a study of the manuscripts and the
genetic process of Flaubert’s and Proust’s writing.
Neefs 212.624 Modern Fictions
The course will examine the uses and the forms of narrative
fictions in 19th and 20th century from examples
taken in Balzac, Flaubert, Maupassant, Michelet, Queneau,
Perec, including the study of recent theories of fiction
(Ricoer, Gennette, Schaeffer, Cohn).
Neefs 212.626 Baudelaire, Verse and Prose
The seminar will propose a close reading of Les Fleurs du mal and Petits poèmes en prose, stressing the esthetic change involved between verse and prose, and questioning the conception of prose as a modern art. We will also study critical and theoretical texts by Baudelaire on literature, painting and other arts. A way to examine the historical, political and esthetical meaning of what Baudelaire called “modernity”. The seminar will be held in French.
Neefs 212.628 Racine
A partir de la lecture de l’ouevre de Racine on se propose
d’analyser la poétique de la passion tragique et la spécificite
de l’écriture dramatique classique.
Russo 212.629 Flaubert Et La Tradition : Madame Bovary L’Education Sentimentale Trois Contes
Flaubert est devenu l'auteur réaliste par excellence, le père du roman moderne. Que ce réalisme est fruit de lecture qui filtre toute expérience vécue, est désormais acquis. Le séminaire propose, dans un premier pas, à travers a "close reading" des textes majeurs de Flaubert, de préciser ce constat: Flaubert déchiffre son temps, lui donne un sens, à travers la lecture des textes antiques et des textes bibliques. Dans un deuxième pas sera explorée la relecture que subissent les textes antiques, et spécialement les textes bibliques, et leur interpretation romantique dans les textes flaubertiens . Le réligieux et le politique apparaîtront sous un autre jour. Flaubert érige son autorité, en inscrivant son époque, sa vie, dans la tradition, tout en la déformant violemment. En ce sens, l'autorité de Flaubert serait tout à fait canonique.
Vinken
212.630 The Essayistic Self , Montaigne
Close study of representative essays, focusing on the ontological, political, aesthetic and erotic themes in Montaigne’s Essais and their relationship to liberal modernity.
Abecassis
212.638 Literature and Politics I: Equality
Writing about equality during the French Revolution: In this seminar we will be looking at three categories of readings: those dealing with theoretical questions, those dealing with places and events, and those which explicitly address the literary and aesthetic issues of writing about the Revolution.
Anderson 212.645 Pascal, A Phiolosophical Anthropology
Close reading of Pascal’s Pensées, Lettres Provinciales and other writings, primarily set against the background of Augustine, Montaigne and Descartes, but also extending forward to Rousseau, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche as well as contemporary critical theory. We will study a series of issues ranging from Christian vs. modern anthropology, existential analytics of subjectivity, rhetorical theory. Primary readings in French where applicable. Seminar language to be determined at first meeting dependent on seminar composition. Also open to humanities, history and religious studies graduate students.
Abecassis 212.653 The Psycho-Picaresque Modernist Novel
Centered on Marcel Proust, Louis-Ferdinand Céline and Albert Cohen, we will study four modernist novels thematically (the specific nature of the French moral(iste) imagination coupled with the traditional trope of the wayward quest) and narratologically (action as pure parody, subjective interiority as narrative, etc.). Readings: La prisonnière, La fugitive, Voyage au bout de la nuit, Belle du seigneur and critical essays on modernism, the picaresque and narratology distributed in class.
Abecassis 212.662 Why Does Theory Matter to Literature?
A critical & historical approach t o the notion of theory in
literary studies. In English, reading knowledge of French.
Cross-listed with Humanities.
Russo 212.690 What About Aesthetics?
During the 20th century, artists, historians of art and philosophers tried to deny the meaning and even the relevance of aesthetics. Modernity developed in counteraction with aesthetics. How and why did this happen?
Today we are witnessing a new rise of interest in aesthetics for ethical and social reasons. Pleasure, disgust, compassion, surprise, the whole aesthetical system could become the basis of an ethical new deal. Emotions, feelings, empathy are studied by neuro- and cognitive sciences and are given a second conceptual life. Reading books, watching movies, hearing music, looking at paintings etc? could help us to live together, deepen our experience and contribute to educate us as human beings.
What is aesthetics, what does an aesthetical point of view mean ? Do we need aesthetics to understand and/or analyze works of art ? Can works of art contribute to our self-improvement ?
To explore these issues, we shall study in this seminar two decisive periods, crossing the French and the German development of aesthetics :
1) the birth of aesthetics in the 18th century
2) its key point at the end of the 19th century
Cohn 212.693 Pour Une Esthetique Morphologique
Cohn 212.696 Literature Confronts Science: Zola
Zola worked with the theories of heredity of his time in
the Rougon-Macquart novels. But he also attempted to
use his understanding of biology and thermodynamics to
reform the theory of the novel in general.
Anderson 212.700 Medieval Lyric I: The Troubadours
This course will examine the rise of the European lyric of
love, politics, religion, and the invention of a vernacular
literary language. The seminar will read selected works,
paying particular attention to the variation in texts
between editions and manuscripts.
Nichols 212.701 Historiography, Literature, and Society in
Medieval France, 1000-1400
From 11th-century chronicles to the vernacular prose
histories of the Crusades and Froissart’s chronicles of
the Hundred Years War, French historiography engages
momentous social issues. Inevitably, it also engages vernacular
literature, sometimes altering its forms and subjects
irrevocably. The seminar will study this phenomenon, its
causes, manifestations, and results.
Nichols 212.702 The Visual Text: Word and Image in a
Manuscript Culture
The course will examine the proposition that medieval
literature, when perceived as a function of the manuscript
that preserved it participates in a dual system of expression:
it is both work and image, literary artifact and visual
image. Viewing medieval vernacular literature from this
perspective involves a cultural construction that incorporates
a range of social, political, economic, religious,
and intellectual structures all interacting with the literary
work. These may not normally be apparent from reading
a version of the work in a modern critical edition.
The course will examine how literary and visual texts are
jointly constituted by the manuscript and, consequently,
how the manuscript functions as supplement, that is as
a matrix for commentary, annotation, and metacritical
speculation. A selection of medieval works will be studied,
including the Roman de la Rose, Jean de Meun’s translation
of Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy, and texts of troubadour
lyrics. The course will also examine theoretical
works dealing with text and image (e.g., Derrida, Mitchell)
as well as textual criticism (e.g., Jerome McGann).
Nichols 212.703 Introduction to Old French
See 212.401 for description.
Nichols 212.704 Geography and the Crusades
Nichols 212.705 Les Fontières du rire au Moyen Âge
Y a-t-il un rire théatral ou autre au Moyen Âge? Quel est
le statut du rire à cette époque? Selon une légende fort
répandue, le Christ ne rit pas. Et pourtant le héros de
chanson de geste rit régulièrement pour signifier...quoi,
au juste? Tertullian fulminait counter le jeu théâtral et
surtout contre la comédie. Et pourtant c’est l’église elleméme
qu’inaugure le drame medieval, ce drame qui
aboutit au délire linguistique qui sont sottie, fatrasie et
farce. Que veut dire cette contradiction? A travers tout une
série de texts littéraires, philosophiques, et théoriques-de
l’antiquité jusqu’à nos jours-le séminaire étudiera ce que
Baudelaire appelle <<De l’essence du rire>>.
Nichols 212.706 The Invention of the Grail Legend: Identity and the Language of Romance
Since the 19th century, the legend of the Holy Grail, Arthur, Merlin, and the knights of the Round Table have conveyed both the past and present of what we mean by “medieval.” The Grail has come to define the hope of romance, and its darker, destructive facets, an ambivalence perfectly captured by Henry James's novel The Golden Bowl. So pervasive has the Grail become in Western culture, that we have all but forgotten that this legend was “invented” in 1200 by a French cleric. He wanted to claim a crucial relic of Christ's Passion for France. The Grail is that object, although, as Umberto Eco's Baudolino ironically notes, a relic invented by romance, for its own ends. The Grail thus becomes a symbol of romance's ability to “make history,” to create “fictional truth.” By studying Grail romances of Chrétien de Troyes, Robert de Boron, Malory and others, the seminar will pose the question of what is romance and how it came to define French history and identity. It will also ask how something so quintessentially French, came to be universalized, its French origins largely forgotten.
Nichols 212.707 Trust and Truth: Artisical Value and Aesthetical Property
The impact of photography, cinema and even television on the system of Fine Arts as well as their social success lead to a question on the veracity of art. The compassion that images produce and the disgust they arouse beyond their historical value as documents, take us back to their truth content. What can truth mean outside the realm of propositions? Can we say that trust is the sensible quality of truth? From an analysis of literary, plastic and musical works, we shall wonder about the possibility of a morality of art works. We shall confront this “ethical” view with the close of the paradigm of art’s autonomy.
Cohn 212.712 Étre auteur au Moven Âge: Entre l’anonymat
et le mythe
Une étude de l’idee de ce que c’est qu’un auteur et
l’(authorial agency) au moyen âge. L’auteur médieval
jouit d’un statut tres différent de celui de l’auteur moderne
)et cela en dépit des efforts de certains penseours
de l’<effacer>.
Nichols 212.715 The French Enlightenment Novel
Readings include Prévost, Manon Lescault; Montesquieu,
Les Lettre persanes; Marivaux, Le Paysan parvenu; Diderot,
La Religieuse and Le Neveu de Rameau; Rousseau, La Nouvelle
Hélois; Laclos, Les Liasions. Full description at www.
wilda.org.
Anderson 212.716 Diderot and the Human Sciences
Diderot’s early work was dominated by his work on the
natural sciences and the Encyclopédie. But in later years, his
literature addresses the social applications of his knowledge:
economic, anthropological, political, and moral
issues structure his aesthetic concerns. Texts to be studied
include Le Supplément au voyage de Bougainville, Essai sur
les règnes de Claude et de Néron, the Salon of 1767, Le Reve de
d’Alembert, Le Neveu de Rameau.
Anderson 212.728 Philosopher en Littérature
Depuis 1945 les relations entre littérature et philosophie ont pris un tour nouveau, l'après-guerre modifiant leurs répartitions discursives et politiques. L'écriture de Sartre a dès lors bouleversé les rapports entre concept et métaphore, entre vérité et fiction, entre spéculation et imagination. Le séminaire suivra ces articulations et leur contestation à travers les écrits de philosophes sur la littérature jusqu'à nos jours. Il abordera la question des genres (poésie et philosophie, philosophies du théâtre), les raisons du choix des écrivains commentés, la concurrence entre théorie littéraire et philosophie de la littérature, l'histoire des conflits disciplinaires. Il analysera la modification des régimes de discours (les polémiques liées à la "littérarisation" de la philosophie ou à la conceptualisation anhistorique de la littérature) et tentera d'évaluer les effets de ces débats aujourd'hui, dans la reformulation d'une pensée de la littérature.
Corpus : Badiou, Bourdieu, Deguy, Deleuze, Derrida, Foucault, Kristeva, Lacoue-Labarthe, Lyotard, Macherey, Milner, Nancy, Rancière, Sartre
Noudelmann 212.730 Quelques Concepts Clefs des Lumiéres
Françaises
Le cours portera sur trois plans-1. qu’est-ce que les
Lumiéres? en insistant sur leur historicité, sur leur construction,
déconstruction et reconstruction dès la Révolution
française et jusqu’à aujourd’hui. 2. Epistémologie de
la Philosophie des Lumiéres: rôle de l’observation, rôle
de l’expérimentation, la définition du philosophe, le
refus de la métaphysique, l’utilité sociale, le sensualisme
lockien... 3. Notions et pratiques des Lumiéres: Pour les
notions: la tolérance, la liberté, le bonheur, la vertu, le
primitivisme, le sens de l’Histoire... Pour les pratiques:
l’engagement du philosophe, la taxinomie (Buffon et
l’Encyclopédie), la nouvelle écriture philosophique, la diffusion
du savoir, le philosophe et la politique.
Anderson 212.731 Passe, Present, Futur au 19eme Siecle
Neefs 212.732 Styles of Prose: 19th Century
Neefs 212.734 De L’Ecriture au Livre, Questions de Genetique
Le séminare s’attachera a la tension entre l’ecriture comme pratique et and invention, dans l’espace de manuscrit et le <livre> des oeuvres, dans leur existence <imprimée>, en s’appliquant a quelques exemples de geneses et d’editions problématiques en ce sens: Chateaubriand, Les Mémoires de’outre-tombe, etc. Nous mettrons l’accent sur ce qui compose la notion meme d’<oeuvre> et sur la question de <l’inachevé>, ainsi que sur les questions d’edition et de genese.
Neefs 212.737 Literature and History, 19th and 20th Century
Literature belongs to History. But does Literature tell something about History and how?
The seminar will examine the main theories dealing with the relationship between Literature and History since the 19th Century. The seminar will give a close reading of a few highly significant works by Balzac, Flaubert, Hugo, Claude Simon, Georges Perec.
Neefs 212.740 History and Tragedy: Shakespeare, Corneille,
and Racine
History seems to go on; tragedy stops. Tragedy from the
Greeks until the 20th Century has been considered the
most important dramatic form; and since Aristotle, at least,
questions have been raised about its relation with history.
This course looks at the relation to history expressed in
five plays: Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”, Corneille’s “Horace”
and “Surena”, Racine’s “Britannicus” and “Athalie”. It will
not be concerned with how the dramatists have arranged
the historical sources they have used so much as how they
have presented their human actors’ relation to some kind
of historical process implied in their play. The texts will be
studied in detail, in relation especially to one modern theoretical
work on tragedy, Walther Benjamin’s “The Origin
of the German Mourning Play”, together with some reference
to other theoretical works on tragedy. Assessment:
by one long essay at the end of the course. Ability to read
French essential.
Hobson 212.741 Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Enlightenment and Dissent
A reading of Rousseau’s major works in light of the debates they have triggered both within the Enlightenment and in postmodernism. Secondary readings by Starobinski, De Man, Derrida.
Russo 212.746 Monsters, Prodigies, and Mysterious Signs in
Renaissance
The modern era has neutralized the enigma of the monster
by relegating it to the fantastic or by rationalizing it as
a medical accident. In Renaissance culture, on the other
hand, monsters were ubiquitous, uncanny and ominous.
The word designates an unusual phenomenon, biological
or cosmological, which is supposed to carry a supernatural
message. If it is a sign, it invites interpretation; if it is
a superstition or an illusion, it requires demystification.
Reading texts by Ronsard, Rabelais, Montaigne and others,
we will work out the strategies provided by literature
to face up to the challenges of the monsters, whether by
decoding their hidden meaning or by emptying them of
their threatening potential. The seminar will be held in
French.
Jeanneret 212.753 Representations of America in XVIth Century France
The responses of French writers and scholars to the progressive discovery of America through the XVIth century reveal a great deal about the Renaissance worldview and the period’s epistemology. How is radical novelty handled? What sets of values are applied to Indians? What theological, moral and anthropological issues are at stake? Authors studied will include Ronsard and Montaigne as well as travellers such as Jacques Cartier, André Thevet and Jean de Léry.
Course conducted in French.
Jeanneret 212.774 Travail, Ecriture et Pensee de la Fin
L'idée de la fin a hanté l'Occident qui s'est représenté sa propre histoire en termes de mort et de renaissance. Elle est devenue constitutive d'un geste artistique, littéraire et philosophique cherchant à promouvoir une ère régénératrice sur le deuil affirmé d'une époque révolue. À partir de la fin du XIXe siècle, ce fantasme apocalyptique, manifesté par les avant-gardes, n'est plus seulement une prophétie mais un travail consistant à mener au bout le processus de l'achèvement. On étudiera les machines conceptuelles et textuelles visant à réaliser la fin, à la fois terminus et finition, augurant une possible recomposition à partir des figures déchues de l'humanisme. L'objectif du séminaire consistera à suivre des œuvres-vie (Nietzsche, Artaud, Sartre, Beckett) qui se sont confrontées à la question de la fin, pour montrer ce qui les différencie de la thématique largement repérable de la génération corrompue, et pour dégager à partir d'elles une perspective post-généalogique.
Noudelmann 212.801 French Independent Study
Staff 212.802 French Dissertation Research
Staff 212.803 French Proposal Preparation
Staff
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