Graduate Course Offerings - Spring 2009

University of Virginia

Department of French Language & Literature

FREN 511/810: Poetry in Motion: Collaboration, Reception, and Transmission of Medieval and Early 16th Century Literature

What happens to literature if we release it from the bound book? Founded on the notion that art is neither produced in a vacuum nor received by passive participants, this course will consider the ways in which fellow writers, patrons, bookmakers, sellers, and audiences transform literature. Some of the topics to be addressed include collaborative authorship, debate poetry, poetic competition, and textual appropriation through rewriting, (re)publishing, or repudiating past texts. We will move with poetry over time and space, considering the responses of later audiences, poetic exchanges among writers, and the passage of books across national boundaries. Our study will go beyond modern print editions to consider the evidence of digitized manuscripts of the Roman de la rose and early print works housed in the UVa Gordon Collection. Authors on the MA reading list to be included are Jean de Meun, Jean Froissart, Eustache Deschamps, Christine de Pizan, Charles d’Orléans, Alain Chartier, Molinet, and Clément Marot.

FREN 540/840 - Literature of the 18th Century

One of the most important movements in Western intellectual history, the Enlightenment, laid the foundations for our current conceptions of democratic government, religious toleration, freedom of speech, and the scientific method, among other things. Its proponents defied the king and the church in order to bring their countries into a new era and, inadvertently, to spark the French and American Revolutions. The readings for this course will focus largely on works by French authors, but they will also feature texts from the British and American Enlightenment. The authors in question will include Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, Emilie du Châtelet, and John Locke. We will particularly focus on strategies, such as humor and fiction, used by the authors in order to hide their provocative ideas from government censors. Primary readings will be supplemented by modern critical reactions to the Enlightenment by thinkers such as Foucault, de Man, and Habermas.

FREN 544/844 - Les formes cinématographiques de l¹histoire
Some scholars argue that film, an essentially twentieth-century medium, has shaped the mental universe of the century. Throughout the century, cinema has maintained a complex and evolving relationship to historical events and circumstances. This course will cover major works of French cinema from the late nineteenth century to the present with a view to exploring this relationship. We will address questions such as whether films are products of a particular socio-historical context, how they have shaped and reflected historical events, and how they have actively intervened in debates over the writing of history and memory. Throughout the course, we will pay particular attention to the specificities of film form and language in negotiating these relationships. Directors covered may include the Lumière brothers, Méliès, Renoir, Clouzot, Marker, Bresson, Truffaut, Chabrol, Godard, Varda, Ophüls, and others. We will also read widely in French history, film history, and film theory.

FREN  545/893 - Topics in Literature                                                       

Selon une opposition traditionnelle, il y a deux manières de concevoir la littérature.  L’une (réaliste) affirme que la littérature parle du monde, le présente ou le représente selon une ressemblance (mimésis), l’autre (formaliste) postule que le langage est irrémédiablement coupé de sa référence, que par conséquent la littérature ne peut parler que d’elle-même.  On présentera un aperçu du Quart Livre de Rabelais pour introduire la lecture de trois textes, Proust, Le Temps retrouvé, Queneau, Les fleurs bleues, Nicolas Bouvier, Le poisson-scorpion, et on essaiera de décrire le plus précisément possible la nature et les formes de la « réalité » telle qu’elle se donne ou se construit dans ces trois œuvres, son statut et sa ou ses fonctions.

FREN571 : Francophone Caribbean Theater

 Analysis of modern and contemporary drama written by Francophone Caribbean playwrights (Guadeloupe, Martinique,Haiti). This course examines issues of colonialism and postcolonialism, reappropriation of history, exile and immigration, tensions between race, gender and social classes through subversive theatrical works which challenge Western dramatic canons. As theater is a literary genre and a living art, close textual analysis will be combined with a theatrical-performance oriented approach of scenography, with screening of videos.  Readings include plays by Aimé Césaire, Ina Césaire, Maryse Condé, Simone Schwarz-Bart, José Pliya, Evelyne Trouillot.

FREN 580/880 - Littérature et société                                                      

A la lecture de trois romans, Les Illusions perdues, Du côté de chez Swann et Les Choses, on essaiera d’analyser les formes de représentation dans lesquelles trois écrivains, dans trois moments historiques différents, donnent à voir une société : modèle dynamique de l’économie soumise à une loi d’énergie, modèle ségrégationniste des interdits familiaux qui organisent la représentation du monde en conservant la loi morale, modèle sociologique d’un déchiffrement supposé scientifique des formes vécues (dans les années 60).  Comment s’articulent ces modèles et les divers types de récits romanesques, quelles contraintes narratives naissent de ces articulations, quelle orientation pour les figures de personnages, les scènes dites de genre, les descriptions, les divers « styles » induisent-ils ? Et notamment, quel type de « héros » ?  Comment se produit l’apprentissage du monde ? comment apparaît la Loi ? comment se formule-t-elle ? Tout ce « monde » a-t-il un sens ? et quelle sorte de langage lui convient ? Le roman est-il une forme adéquate ? et de quelle nature (dramatique, analyse, témoignage…) ?