400 Level
A study of cultural expression through the writing of formal compositions and the analysis and translation of texts. The course is designed to give advanced students a finer feeling for French style, an awareness of shades of meaning and a mastery of certain difficulties not discussed in lower-level language courses. Enrollment is limited to students participating in the France Study Group (Dijon).
This course examines, by means of lecture and discussion, the impact of geography, demography, history, politics, economics, patterns of behavior and the French cultural heritage on contemporary France. Enrollment is limited to students participating in the France Study Group (Dijon).
This seminar traces the evolution of French theater through a detailed analysis of major dramatic forms and currents prevalent in France from the Middle Ages to the late nineteenth century. The course examines French theater both in light of the dramatic doctrines formulated at various times in its history by theoreticians and dramatists and in relation to the main intellectual and philosophical currents that influenced dramatic vision and practice. Authors studied generally include Adam de la Halle, Rotrou, Corneille, Racine, Molière, Marivaux, Beaumarchais, Hugo, Musset, Vigny and Rostand.
This course focuses on some of the major poets of the nineteenth century, by studying their work in the context of the larger political, social and historical events of the time. Readings concentrate on representative texts of the following poets: Lamartine, Alfred de Vigny, Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, Hugo, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Mallarmé and others.
453 Readings in French Poetry II
This course analyzes some major poets of the twentieth century in the context of larger artistic, political and social movements. Readings focus on representative texts of the following poets: Apollinaire, Claudel, Valéry, Breton, Jouve, Emmanuel, Bonnefoy, Ponge, Jaccottet and others.
460 Literature of the Renaissance
This course examines the impact of humanism, the Italian Renaissance, the Reformation and the discovery of the New World on the major poets and prose writers of the sixteenth century. Rabelais, Montaigne, Marot, Louise Labé, Du Bellay and Ronsard are the writers whose works reflect the new tastes, new tendencies and new aspirations that characterize this turbulent period.
462 The Age of Enlightenment
This course is devoted to writers whose liberal ideas and militant prose provoked the intellectual and social ferment that paved the way for the French Revolution: Montesquieu, Prévost, Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau and Laclos. Works read focus on the progression from the rationalisme philosophique of the first half of the eighteenth century to the sensibilité préromantique of the second half.
463 The French Novel in the Romantic
Period
This seminar explores the development of the novel in the first half of the nineteenth century. The course begins by examining the historical, social and literary circumstances that prevailed in post-revolutionary France and that influenced writers and their efforts to renew the novel. Through close analysis of texts by such authors as Chateaubriand, Constant, Musset, Sand, Hugo, Stendhal and Balzac, the course traces the extent to which Romanticism, the dominant literary movement of the time, informed literary innovations and accounted both for the popularity of certain narrative genres and for the visions and concerns expressed in these works.
464 The Realist and Naturalist Novel
The focus of this seminar is on the evolution of the novel in the second half of the nineteenth century. Influenced by the philosophical current of positivism and reacting against Romanticism, novelists aimed at the objective representation of contemporary reality. Works by such authors as Dumas fils, Flaubert, Maupassant, Daudet and Zola are studied in the context of the literary movements of Realism and Naturalism. The texts usually selected for discussion are centered on the representation of women. Through critical textual analysis the course examines the relationship between the theoretical positions espoused by proponents of Realism and Naturalism and their literary practice.
465 Twentieth-Century French Literature
I
This seminar examines some of the most important novels and plays of the first three decades of our century. Authors read generally include Gide, Proust, Colette, Radiguet, Breton and Cocteau; the following questions are discussed: How did these writers see their role in the rapidly changing social and political climate of the period? How did they transform the two dominant literary modes of the end of the nineteenth century (Naturalism and Symbolism) to express more modern concerns? How are we to understand the emergence of an introspective hero who so often searches for his or her identity on the margins of society?
466 Twentieth-Century French Literature
II
The concerns of this seminar are similar to those of
FREN 465. The works read, however, are from the late 1930s onward. Authors usually include Malraux, Sartre, Camus, Beckett, Ionesco, Butor and Duras.467 France under the Occupation
This course, in addition to examining the historical reality of life in Occupied France, analyzes the ways artists of the period understood and represented their experiences and those of their compatriots. The class reads and views works produced after 1944 that attempt to come to terms with the traumatic events of these years and with the complex issues of collaboration, resistance, decadence and anti-Semitism. Authors read generally include Sartre, Aragon, Eluard, Montherlant, Duras, Schwarz-Bart, Céline and La Rochelle. The class also views films by such cinematographers as Resnais, Bresson, Carné, Malle and Truffaut.
468 Literature of Adventure and Quest
This course studies the evolution and transmutation of conventions of quest literature from the Middle Ages to the present day. The course examines the significance of the changes within the genre as reflections of the cultures from which they emerge. Readings range from the romances of Chrétien de Troyes to the contemporary French novel.
469 Contemporary French Literature
This course is taught at the University of Burgundy and limited to France Study Group participants.
472 Molière and La Fontaine
The course will provide a detailed study of two major writers of French Classical literature, emphasizing especially the creation of individual comic and satirical styles within the classical tradition. The course will examine both specific themes such as the images of king, court and society, and more general literary and cultural questions. These will include the nature of comedy, the relationship between popular culture and literary art, and the problem of literary translation. Readings will be drawn from the farces, short plays and major works of Molière and from the Fables, the Contes et nouvelles and selected minor poems of La Fontaine, as well as from La Fontaine's legacy in pictorial art and folklore.
474 The Court of Louis XIV
The theme of the court is used to explore the major works in prose and poetry of Classical France, reading these works as examples both of insightful social analysis and of outstanding achievements in literary style and art. Readings are drawn primarily from the works of Madame de Sévigné, Racine, Pascal, La Rochefoucauld, Madame de Lafayette and La Bruyère. Key topics include the relationship between writer and society in seventeenth-century France, Versailles as a theatrical setting for the Sun-King, and literature as both social commentary and divertissement. The seminar also studies the theme of the court as it is expressed in seventeenth-century painting and music.
480 Major French Authors
This seminar, offered on an irregular basis, provides the opportunity for extensive study of the works of the most distinguished authors writing in the French language. It is taught by a faculty member who has particular interest and expertise in the literature to be examined.
200, 300, 400 Courses Taken Abroad
291, 391, 491 Independent Studies
Course Offerings | Romance Languages
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