212.101 (H) What Makes a Novel Interesting ?
Gilman Lecture Course in Humanities
Do novels afford a distinctive kind of knowledge about society, history, psychology, human beliefs, ethical and spiritual experiences ? How do fictional works retain their interest and vitality over time ? How are perennialy provocative topics such as power, politics, love, sexuality, social concerns, symbolic figures renewed through formal inventions in narrative. We will consider the interelation of the form and content of novels, reading some major fictions by Balzac, Hugo, Dickens, Flaubert, Melville, Perec…
Neefs 3 credits 212.201-202 (H,W) Introduction à la littérature
française I, II
Readings and discussion of texts of various genres from
the Middle Ages to the 20th century. The two semesters
may be taken in either order. This sequence is a prerequisite
to all further literature courses. Students may
coregister with an upper-level course during their second
semester. Prerequisites: both semesters of 210.301-302 or
at least one semester of 210.301-302 with a grade of A
and written permission of the instructor. Note: 210.301-
302 are prerequisites for all undergraduate courses with
higher numbers. These courses count as advanced courses and carry both
university and major credit.
Staff 3 credits 212.300 (H) Erotisme et Religion
Introduction à l’oeuvre de Georges Bataille et ses grands
thémes: l’érotisme, etc. Textes de Bataille, Sade, Nietzsche,
Baudelaire, Caillois, Leiries, etc.
Mobarek 3 credits 212.301 (H,W) L’Amour et le rire au Moyen Âge
Old French literature contributed much to the Romance
form as we know it. In the Middle Ages, Romance was
a vigorous and varied literary genre. Using poetry and
verse, it explored the dimensions of passion and desire
in human terms, in spiritual terms, in social, economic,
and political terms. Romance offered the Middle Ages a
vehicle for creating a new philosophy of human nature
as well as a subject for exploring the limits of language
and poetic forms. Old French literature also contributed
a literature of laughter to the European scene. In new
genres adapting old folk tales, like the fabliaux and the
sottie, or in new forms of theater like the jeux and farces,
medieval authors developed human dimensions of satire
and irony. This course will explore the evolution of
Romance and courtly love in such works as the Lais de
Marie de France, the Lancelot and grail romances of Chrétien
de Troyes, La Quête du Saint Graal, and the Roman de la Rose.
Love and laughter in different configurations form the
basis for fabliaux and works like Aucassin et Nicolette and
Le Jeu de Robin et Marion. Texts will be read in modern
French translation.
Nichols 3 credits 212.302 (H,W) Love, Death, and the Supernatural in
Medieval and Modern French
L’amour, la mort, et l’irréel-three themes connected by the
belief that love and death operate in a zone apart from
the everyday world. Some of the most extraordinary and
little-known works of the Middle Ages explore the links
between love and death passing through the space of
fantasy known in French as l’irréel. Beginning with the
development of these themes in four medieval works,
the course will then show the transformation of the same
impulse in 19th- and 20th-century French novels. Among
the works read will be Le Roman de Tristan, Mélusine, Le
Coeur mangé, La Manekine, Victor Hug Notre Dame de
Paris, Flaubert: Saint Julien l’Hospitalier, Jean Gion Le
Hussard sur le Toit, Montherlant: La Reine Morte, Céline:
Guignol’s Band.
Nichols 3 credits 212.303 (H,W) Monsters, Maidens, and Meals in
Medieval French Literature
The fascination of a period as different from ours as the
Middle Ages derives in part from our seeing the ease
with which the boundaries of the “real” and the “imaginary”
overlap. The categories of “human,” “animal,” and
“monstrous” were less separate then than they are today.
Women, monsters, and food play roles in medieval narrative
in ways that tell us much about the people of the
period. Studying selected romances, fabliaux, chronicles,
epics, and plays will show the historic reality of the imaginary
world of the European Middle Ages.
Nichols 3 credits 212.310 Versailles et la Cour
The extravagant construction of Versailles, the rigorous order imposed through it on life at court are both part of Louis XIV’s strategy to establish and demonstrate his absolute control over France. Acknowledging the power of public media such as the arts and literature, the king also mobilises the writers and artists in his political agenda. Molière produces plays for the festivals at Versailles and La Fontaine describes the marvels of the park as it is being constructed. Others, like La Bruyère and Saint-Simon, analyse the complexities and eccentricities of the courtly society. Some admire the brilliance of the Sun King’s universe, others discreetly denounce the growing tyranny of the Crown and ridicule the submissive behaviour of puppet-like courtiers. The underlying theme of the class will be a reflexion on the complex relationship between literature and power at a time when most freedoms are curtailed. The seminar will be held in French.
Jeanneret 3 credits
212.316 (H,W) 18th-Century French Theater
The development of the drama bourgeois and the theater
criticism of the French Enlightenment. Authors to
be studied include Racine, Le Sage, Marivaux, Voltaire,
Diderot, and Beaumarchais. Prerequisite: 212.201.
Anderson 3 credits 212.317 (H,W) The 18th-Century French Novel
Key novels will be studied from a variety of approaches.
Readings include Marivaux, Montesquieu, Prévost,
Diderot, Crèbillon, Rousseau, Laclos, and Voltaire. Prerequisite:
212.201.
Anderson 3 credits 212.318 (H,W) Women in French Literature of the 17th
and 18th Centuries
This course will examine the changes in the relationship
of women to literature in France before the French
Revolution from several points of view: (1) What were the
social and intellectual contexts of gender distinctions? (2)
How did men writing about women differ from women
writing about women? (3) How were these questions
affected by the changing norms of literary productions?
Texts by Mme. de Sèvignè, Molière, Mme. de Lafayette,
Prèvost, Diderot, Rousseau, Laclos, and Beaumarchais.
Prerequisite: 212.201.
Anderson 3 credits 212.319 (H,W) 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. This course
will examine these two different effects of science on literature
and try to see what leads an author to undertake
such a project. Prerequisite: 212.201.
Anderson 3 credits 212.321 (H,W) French 19th Century: The Equivocal
Birth of Modernity
Reading texts by Chateaubriand, Balzac, Hugo, Flaubert,
Baudelaire, considering also other arts, mainly painting.
Course will examine the literary and aesthetic representation
of modern democratic society in France during the
19th century.
Neefs 3 credits 212.323 (H,W) Reading Poetry (19th and 20th
Centuries)
A close reading of prominent poems. This course will
present an opportunity to question the historical variations
of poetry and the tension between verse and prose.
Neefs 3 credits 212.324 (H) Reading the Novel
Neefs 3 credits 212.325 (H) Short Stories, Fantasy, Realism
This course will offer a close reading of 19th- and 20thcentury
short stories by Gautier, Mérimée, Flaubert, Maupassant,
Colette, and Beckett.
Neefs 3 credits 212.329 (H) Rire et Philosophe
Mobarek 3 credits 212.330 (H) Le Roman Noir Francophone
The significance of the “roman noir” in francophone literature of the twentieth century starting with an overview of its evolution. Authors: Manchette, Dutrizac, Mad, Ndione, and Ngoye.
Giraud 3 credits 212.340 (H) Diderot and Rousseau Between
1749 and 1756
This course will look at five major texts written by these two
philosophers at a time when they were also close friends.
Diderot’s two letters examine whether there is a firm basis
for our knowledge, universal to all men. His letters are hard
to interpret, but seem to point to language and pedagogical
tradition as the answer to this question. He is an atheist.
Rousseau probes into the moral value of human culture,
and then into whether there is a possible social basis in
man for man’s development. He comes to realize that he is
not an atheist. The course will help students become familiar
with texts that are at the very basis of mid 18th-century
free-thinking and political thought. The texts will be read
in French but translations exist for all but one.
Hobson 3 credits
212.375 (H) French Culture Through Poetry: From
Early Modern to Modern
This seminar has two objectives: (1) Students will learn
how to read poetry, how to understand the significance of
forms and will get a chance to improve their skill in close
reading and interpretation of poems. (2) The selection
of texts, ranging from the 16th century, with Ronsard, to
the late 19th century, with Rimbaud, and including such
major poets as Malherbe, La Fontaine and Baudelaire,
will provide insights into the ideology and aesthetics of
different cultures in premodern and modern France:
the Renaissance, the Classical period, Romanticism and
finally the outbreak of a radical modernism. The seminar
will be held in French.
Jeanneret 3 credits 212.399 (H) La Pousuite de Bonheur
Etude thématique à travers des textes littéraires et philosophiques du 17ème siècle au 20ème siècle (poésie, théâtre, romans, discourse théoriques). Cours dirigé en français.
Mobarek 3 credits 212.400 (H,W) Histoires d’Amour
Une étude du discours amoureux à travers les siècles.
Course conducted in French.
Mobarek 3 credits 212.401 (H,W) Introduction to Old French
The course will introduce students to old French language
through close reading of representative texts. Permission
of the instructor required.
Nichols 3 credits 212.402 (H) Le Roi Artur, le Saint Graal, et les
Chevaliers de la Table Ronde
Qui est le roi Artur et pourquoi la légende du saint graal
s’est-elle évoluée autour de sa cour? D’où vient l’idée
d’une chevalerie consacrée à la quête du saint graal ?
Pourquoi la France au 12e siècle est-elle devenu le berceau
de ce mythe perdurable? Et, enfin, pourquoi cette
légende a-t-elle exercé une fascination continue sur l’imagination
moderne? En lisant des romans de Chrétien de
Troyes et d’autres auteurs médiévaux, ce cours tâchera
de répondre à de telles questions. On examinera, pour
terminer, quelques traitements cinématographiques contemporains
du thème.
Nichols 3 credits 212.408 (H) Love, Poetry, Eroticism
The course will develop two approaches to the theme of love, one historical, one theoretical. The historical approach will enable us to understand significant changes in social behaviour and ethics. Using the theoretical approach, we will explore the limits of what is tolerated in the expression of erotic desire. Texts studied will be borrowed from a variety of French poets, from the Renaissance to Romanticism.
Course conducted in French.
Jeanneret 3 credits 212.409 (H) Sade: Philosophie et Littérature
Religion, sexualité, éthique, et politique dans l’œuvre de
Sade.
Mobarek 3 credits 212.411 (H,W) Libertinage and Galanterie in 17th- and
18th-Century French Fiction
A study of representations of love, eroticism, and gender in
the novel and theater. From neoplatonist ideals to the cruelties
of libertinage, love was seen in turn as an instrument
of social initiation, a civilizing force, a source of dissolution,
a disenchanted game, a heroic ideal or a bitter failure: in
any case, it was the stuff of novels and the kernel of the
literary imagination. Focus on the relationship between
love and the novel as a genre, more specifically on the
strategies of disguise and deceit, the euphemistic veiling
of the body, eroticism, and reading, the shifting boundaries
between feminine and masculine identities. Works by
D’Urfé, Marivaux, Crébillon, Laclos, Denon, Choisy.
Russo 3 credits 212.415 (H) Dumas & Verne: The Spirit of a New Age
Alexandre Dumas’ ‘industrial’ production of the historical novel and Jules Verne’s invention of the novels of technology embodied opposing modes of the 19th century’s post-Revolutionary optimism. This course investigates the sources of these new genres and their cultural impact. Titles to include the Trois Mousquetaires cycle, Le comte de Monte-cristo, L’île mystérieuse, le Sphinx des glaces, Michel Strogoff…
Anderson 3 credits 212.416 (H,W) French Enlightenment
The French Enlightment was not a monolithic theoretical
and universalizing program as its English name suggests,
but, as Les Lumières implies, a complex historical event
composed of three intertwined strains. This course will
investigate the productive tension between the Lumières du
savoir, the Lumiè poétiques, and the Lumières du pouvoir that
generated the greatest literary works from 1710 to the early
Revolution. For full description, see http://www.wilda.org/
Course/Course Vault/Undergrad/Enlighten/home.html.
Prerequisite 212.201 or permission of instructor.
Anderson 3 credits 212.418 (H) Une Littérature Révolutionnaire
The French Revolution, studied through the 18th-century
works that led to it, the memoirs, poems, plays, and
speeches written during it, and the 19th-century literature
that culturally digested it. Authors included Rousseau,
Rétif de la Bretonne, Mercier, Robespierre, Sta‘l, Michelet,
Dumas. This course uses a digital archive of the texts
and an online writing workshop.
Anderson 3 credits 212.424 (H) 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 3 credits 212.425 (H) 20th Century Jewish Fiction in France
This course will examine the fictional and autobiographical works of Albert Cohen, Irène Nemirovsky, Romain Gary, Georges Perec and Patrick Mondiano. Course discussions will be thematically centered on the historical and aesthetic contexts for these representative works, which include Judaism and French/European identities, modernist aesthetic of the novel and the centrality of auto-fictions in the works of these authors.
Abecassis 3 credits 212.430 (H,W) Senior Seminar
An in-depth and closely supervised initiation to research
and thinking, oral and written expression, which leads to
the composition of a senior thesis in French.
Staff 3 credits 212.435 (H) Savages, Women and Eccentrics: The Invention of Society in Eighteenth-Century France
This course will focus on the Enlightenment taste for social experiment: from the clash with the primitive other, to the creation of utopian sexualities, to devising new and perilous methods of education, novelists, playwrights and philosophers seek to develop new conceptions of the social bond through odd encounters and the invention of a new human being. Texts by Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau, Marivaux, Sade, Mercier and others. In French.
Russo 3 credits 212.501-502 Independent Study
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