Courses 2007-08

French Literature and Culture

FRENLIT 130. Authorship, Book Culture, and National Identity in Medieval and Renaissance France— An introduction to the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The birth of a national literature and its evolution: the origin of the sonnet and the novel, the rise of notions of Authorship, Self, and Nation, and the transition from manuscript to print culture. Literature as addressing cultural, philosophical and artistic issues questioning our assumptions on Love, Ethics, Art or Humanism. Readings: epics ( La Chanson de Roland), medieval romances (Tristan; Chrétien de Troyes’ Yvain), Petrarchan poetics (Du Bellay, Ronsard, Labé), and prose humanists (Rabelais, Montaigne). Prerequisite: FRENLANG 126 or consent of instructor. WIM. 4 units, Win (Alduy, C)

FRENLIT 131. Absolutism, Enlightenment, and Revolution in 17th- and 18th-Century France—The literature, culture, and politics of France from Louis XIV to Rousseau. How this period produced the political and philosophical foundations of modernity. Readings include Bodin, Hobbes, Racine, Lafayette, Locke, Voltarie, Diderot, Rousseau, and Beaumarchais. Prerequisite: FRENLANG 126 or consent of instructor. GER:DB-Hum, WIM. 4 units, Win (Apostolidès, J)

FRENLIT 132. Literature, Revolutions, and Changes in 19th- and 20th-Century France—Major literary genres, and social and cultural contexts. Focus is on the emergence of new literary forms such as surréalisme, nouveau roman, and nouveau théâtre. Topics of colonization, decolonization, and feminism. Readings include Balzac, Baudelaire, Césaire, Colette, and Ionesco. Prerequisite: FRENLANG 126 or consent of instructor. GER:DB-Hum, WIM. 4 units, Aut (Boyi, E)

FRENLIT 133. Literature and Society: Introduction to Francophone Literature from Africa and the Caribbean—(Same as COMPLIT 141.) Major African and Caribbean writers. Issues raised in literary works which reflect changing aspects of the societies and cultures of Francophone Africa and the French Caribbean. Topics include colonization and change, quest for identity, tradition and modernity, and new roles and status for women. Readings in fiction and poetry. Authors include Laye Camara, Mariama Ba, and Joseph Zobel. In French. Prerequisite: FRENLANG 126 or consent of instructor. GER:DB-Hum, EC-GlobalCom. 3-5 units, Spr (Boyi, E)

FRENLIT 175. Literature of Crisis: Contradiction and Community—How antithetical responses provoked by crisis demonstrate literature’s capacity to produce and sustain apparently untenable contradictions; how this paradoxically may make literature a conciliatory force. Focus is on opposed responses to crises in modern France: an epistemological crisis (Balzac and Flaubert), a political crisis (Rostand and Jarry), a crisis of community (Proust and Céline), and a literary crisis (Sartre and Gracq). In French. 3-5 units, Win (Picherit, H)

FRENLIT 189A. Honors Research—Senior honors students enroll for 5 units in Winter while writing the honors thesis, and may enroll in 189B for 2 units in Spring while revising the thesis. Prerequisite: DLCL 189. 5 units, Win (Staff)

FRENLIT 189B. Honors Research—Open to juniors with consent of adviser while drafting honors proposal. Open to senior honors students while revising honors thesis. Prerequisites for seniors: 189A, DLCL 189. 2 Spr (Staff)

FRENLIT 199. Individual Work—Restricted to French majors with consent of department. Normally limited to 4-unit credit toward the major. May be repeated for credit. 1-12 units, Aut, Win, Spr (Staff)

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FRENLIT 204. Revolutions in Prose: The 19th-Century French Novel—How the French Revolution and its aftershocks were represented in novels; how this political imperative revolutionized literary form. Readings from Stendhal, Hugo, Balzac, Flaubert, Sand, and Zola.3-5 units, Aut (Edelstein, D)

FRENLIT 209. Colonial Ghosts: The French Novel in the Age of Imperialism—How colonial encounters and elisions haunt works from the margins of the text, shape literary discourses about modernity, and serve or disrupt the novel’s totalizing aspirations. Focus is on depictions of N. Africa. Readings may include novels by Balzac, Gautier, Maupassant, Loti, Bertrand, and Camus; and theoretical and critical texts by Freud, Said, Jameson, Behdad, and Dobie. 3-5 units, Win (Bell, D)

FRENLIT 219. The Renaissance Body—The body as locus for desire, pleasure, disease, mortality, sexuality, and gender; and as canon of beauty and reflection of cosmic harmony. How literature responded to the development of an anatomical gaze in arts and medicine; how it staged the aesthetic, religious, philosophical, and moral issues related to such a promotion or deconstruction of the body. Does literature aim at representing the body, or use it as signifier for intellectual, emotional, and political ideas? Readings from Rabelais, Scève, Ronsard, Labé, d’Aubigné, Montaigne, and medical texts. 3-5 units, Aut (Alduy, C)

FRENLIT 243. Nature in 20th-Century French Poetry—Changing views of the natural world, imagined as lost paradise, exotic escape, national landscape, source of spiritual insight, or fragile environment. Authors include Cadou, Valéry, Eluard, Reverdy, Saint-John Perse, Char, Césaire, Segalen, Bonnefoy, and Deguy. In French. 3-5 units, Win (Wittman, L)

FRENLIT 258. Literature, History, and Representation—(Same as COMPLIT 250.) Literary works as historical narratives; texts which envision ways of reconstructing or representing an ancient or immediate past through collective or individual narratives. Narration and narrator; relation between individual and collective history; historical events and how they have shaped the narratives; master narratives; and alternative histories. Reading include Glissant, Césaire, Dadié, Cixous, Pérec, Le Clézio, Mokkedem, Benjamin, de Certeau, and White. 3-5 units, Spr (Boyi, E)

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FRENLIT 288. Exile Literature in French: Place, Self, and Writing in French Literature—While some French intellectuals were forced into exile, writers from all over the world have gathered in France to find refuge. Emigrés and immigrés, from and to France, often wrote their most poignant works from a place of emotional longing and geographical distance from their native land. Issues such as national identity, marginality, foreigners’ alienation, and the narrative of space. Readings by Du Bellay, Voltaire, Chateaubriand, Hugo, Camus, Kundera, Nancy Huston, and Le Clezio. 3-5 units, Spr (Alduy, C)

FRENLIT 293A. Topics in French Literature and Philosophy—Five-week course. May be repeated for credit. 2 units, Spr (Serres, M)

FRENLIT 293B. Topics in French Literature and Philosophy—Five-week course. May be repeated for credit. 2 units, not given this year

FRENLIT 299. Individual Work—May be repeated for credit. 1-12 units, Aut, Win, Spr, Sum (Staff)

FRENLIT 399. Individual Work—For students in French working on special projects or engaged in predissertation research. 1-12 units, Aut, Win, Spr, Sum (Staff)

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