Graduate Course Offerings – Spring 2007

University of Virginia
Department of French Language and Literature

    FREN 501 PERFECTIONNEMENT LINGUISTIQUE

Ce cours de techniques d’écriture est un entraînement intensif à la rédaction de tout type de documents (essai, prose, analyse littéraire, article de presse, synthèse, etc.), accompagné de nombreux exercices raisonnés de traduction, donnant lieu à une analyse individuelle et rigoureuse des erreurs (grammaire, orthographe, vocabulaire, style) et complété par un travail régulier d'enrichissement stylistique et sémantique.

Ouvrage obligatoire : Alain Bentolila, Vocabulaire, Le Robert et Nathan, 2005

Ouvrage recommandé : Jean Darbelnet et Jean-Pierre Vinay, Stylistique comparée du français et de l’anglais, Paris, Didier, 1993

            1400-1515       TR                   Ms. Debray                  CAB 215

    FREN 530/830

Larvatus prodeo, “I go about masked,” wrote Descartes.  As the writer most often designated as inaugurating “modernity,” Descartes’s description of his own disguise gives a tantalizing insight into the preoccupations of his time. Why the mask?  If I wear a mask, so, probably, do others.  What is behind the mask?  Perhaps there is nothing; perhaps others are simply automates, machines with no inner life.  Is it ever safe to reveal what one is hiding, to confess?  Can one even know what is behind one’s own mask, or are we hidden from ourselves?  These are some of the major questions raised by seventeenth-century French literature.  Among writers to be considered in this seminar, some are widely read (Pascal, La Rochefoucauld, Lafayette, Molière, Racine) and others less so (Périer, Jeanne des Anges, Faret, Méré, Scudéry).  In addition to a broad selection of common readings, each student will be invited to define either a thematic or a writer-specific project to share, on an ongoing basis, with the seminar.

            1400-1515       MW                 Mr. Lyons                   FRN 102

    FREN 540/840: EXOTICISM DURING THE ENLIGHTENMENT AND THE ROMANTIC ERA

Why does polygamy flourish in one region and not another? How can nutmeg bring about the downfall of a civilization? How does language reflect the characters of people? Are all Italians effeminate, all Indians passive, all Scandinavians drunkards, all Native Americans stoic, and all French people as inconstant as butterflies? Many writers, such as Montesquieu, Buffon, and Rousseau, asked themselves these very questions and proposed various theories to explain the character of different peoples. This course will focus on these attempts to make sense of the new discoveries and commerce between France and the rest of the world. Before French colonialism and racial theories reached their peak, these writers speculated, sometimes with great insight, sometimes with wild irrationality, about national differences and their causes and effects, with their own nationality not always emerging the winner.

The course requirements will include one short literary analysis, one longer research paper, and weekly response messages. Readings will include some travel narratives, some fiction, and some philosophy:

Lettres édifiantes et curieuses (Voyages of Jesuits in China)

Voltaire, Candide

Mary Wortley Montagu, Letters from the Turkish Embassy

Buffon, Histoire naturelle

Montesquieu, L'Esprit des lois [extraits], Lettres persanes

Rousseau, Essai sur l'origine des langues

Raynal, Histoire... des deux Indes

Chateaubriand, Atala

Germaine de Staël, De l'Allemagne [extraits]

Claire de Duras, Ourika

            1530-1800       T                      Ms. Tsien                     FRN 102

    FREN 545/845 BAUDELAIRE / RIMBAUD

An invitation to plunge deeply into the world and work of the two poets following Baudelaire's words: "Plonger au fond du gouffre, Enfer ou Ciel qu'importe? / Au fond de l'Inconnu pour trouver du nouveau!"

            1530-1800       R                      Ms. Lyu                       FRN 102

    FREN 562/860

L’aventure de La Recherche ou l’approche du réel

(petit parcours de la pensée de Proust)

Je me propose de lire un certain nombre de fragments prélevés dans l’œuvre toute entière,depuis Combray (Du côté de chez Swann) jusqu’à la matinée Guermantes  (Le Temps retrouvé), avec une attention particulière à quelques pages des Jeunes filles en fleurs et de La prisonnière qui témoignent d’une terrible difficulté pour sentir et comprendre la relation aux choses telles qu’elles sont (peut-être, probablement), à la réalité enfin déprise de nos constructions imaginaires, c’est-à-dire plus vraie. Ce parcours fait faire l’expérience longue et tâtonnante des manières dont une philosophie conventionnelle, abstraite et apprise dans la tradition classique, entrave gravement la compréhension qu’on peut avoir du monde, et écarte du réel dont on sent bien pourtant qu’il doit exister quelque part, étant donné qu’on perçoit sa présence avec ravissement dans certains instants magnifiques, aussitôt disparus qu’éprouvés. D’où une quête inlassable pour sauver de la disparition ces moments souverains, dont la tradition esthétique que Proust a découverte en lisant Ruskin promet qu’on peut les retrouver, les dire et qu’ils réassurent le lien que nous pouvons avoir avec  le monde.

Trois ouvrages pour l’essentiel me guideront dans la lecture de cette aventure :

S. Beckett, Proust, Minuit, 1990 (Grove Press, Inc. NY, Evergreen Books, LTD, London, First  published in 1931)

G. Picon, Lecture de Proust, Gallimard, 1963 (Folio, 1995)

M. Merleau-Ponty, Le visible et l’invisible, Gallimard, 1964

Je m’aiderai de l’ouvrage d’A. Simon, Proust ou le réel retrouvé, PUF, 2000.

Les textes de M. Proust, réunis dans le Contre Sainte-Beuve, Pléiade, et en particulier les écrits consacrés à l’esthétique (en particulier les peintres comme Rembrandt ou Monet), comme la traduction de l’ouvrage de J. Ruskin, Sésame et les lys, éditée par A. Compagnon (Editions Complexes, 1987), devraient être profitables.

A titre de rappel, j’évoquerai parmi l’immense bibliographie proustienne un certain nombre de lectures très riches :

E. Bizub, La Venise intérieure, La Baconnière, 1991

P. Citati, La colombe poignardée, Gallimard, 1997

A. Compagnon, Proust entre deux siècles, Seuil, 1989

M. Lavagetto, Chambre 43, Belin, 1996

G. Poulet, L’espace proustien, Gallimard, 1963

L. Spitzer, Etudes de style, Gallimard, 1970

J-Y Tadié, Proust et le roman, Gallimard, 1971, et

                  La cathédrale du temps, Gallimard, Découvertes, 2000

            1400-1515       TR                   Mr. Pouilloux                CAB 222

    FREN 570/870 SEMBENE OUSMANE: ROMANCIER ET CINEASTE

This course will examine the work of Sembène Ousmane as a novelist and filmmaker. The two forms of art will provide the basis for a study of forms of expression and narrative styles. The social criticism that Sembène's art deploys will be discussed in reference to some of the major social and political situations that have shaped his action and thought since World War II: the colonial situation, the rise of African nationalism and the struggle for independence; decolonization and its aftermath, neocolonialism and the advent of the postcolonial condition. The course will explore the ways in which Sembène employs novels and films -and to what extent he succeeds or fails in his endeavor- to speak for and to depict agents and conditions of possibility of change in Africa. Students will be required to write reviews of the films and the novels, and a research paper.

Students are expected to view the following films (on Reserve at Clemons Library): Borom Sarret, La Noire de…, Le Mandat, Emitai, Xala, Ceddo, Guelwar, Faat Kine, Moolade.

Novels and Short Stories: Les Bouts de bois de Dieu, La Noire de…, L'Harmattan, Le Mandat, Xala, Guelwar.

            1530-1800       M                     Mr. Drame                   CAB 334

    FREN 580/880 THE MODERN FRENCH IMPERIAL IMAGINATION

How could a nation founded on the principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity justify the governance of one of the largest empires in the world? Was colonialism a natural extension of French republicanism? Was the idea of "Greater France" integral to the French concept of itself as a nation? What role did scientific explanations of subjects such as race and public health play in writing and governing the empire? In short, what did the empire mean to France?

This course will explore the construction of a "colonial idea" in metropolitan France from the early Third Republic through decolonization in media such as literary, historical, and ethnographic texts as well as film, political discourse, and advertising. Aside from providing historical context, mining these sources will likely establish a framework for students to understand better more recent constructions of and debates over the meaning of colonialism.

            1530-1800       W                    Ms. Levine                   CLM 201

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