« French Culture » Elective Course

Syllabus

Dear Students,

This course proposes an overview on cultural trends and major works of arts of France.

Following a chronological approach (from the Roman Empire until the contemporary period), the course gives a large panorama of the main

cultural references you could share with French people.

HEC - Centre de Langue Française - CCIP - French Culture - Lucie Chauveau© 2018

HEC - Centre de Langue Française - CCIP - French Culture - Lucie Chauveau© 2018 2

Syllabus• Seminar 1 - From The End of the Roman Empire to the end of the

Middle Ages - 476-1453 : Legacy of the Roman Empire, Crusades, Architecture, Joan of Arc, Religious arts, Poetry, …

• Part 1 – The pre Romanesque and Romanesque period, from 975 to 1223

• Basilica of Vézelay

• 2nd Part – The Gothic period and the Apogee of France - from 1200 to 1453

• Les Très riches heures du Duc de Berry (Ca. 1410)

• Seminar 2- The Renaissance period and the religious wars – 1480 – 1610 : Relations between France and Italy, Religions, Francis the 1st, Henry the 4th, Rabelais, Leonardo Da Vinci, Montaigne…

• Part 1 – Francis the 1st (François 1er) and the boom of Italian Renaissance arts –1494 – 1570

• Château de Chambord / La Joconde, Leonardo Da Vinci

• Part 2 – Times of crisis and religious wars – 1570 – 1610

• Massacre de la St Barthélémy – François Dubois (Lausanne)

Why is Asterixso popular in

France ?

Where do Lancelot and the « Round

Table Knights » come from?

How come French people are still so fond of a 19 years old

heroin?

What do we see whenwatching a cathedral?

What castle isthis?

Is this really Notre Dame!?

How did Mona Lisa come to

France? And didthe French stole

it?

Why is this castleso famous and

mysterious?

What was Paris likein the Renaissance?

How France was split into

two?

Why is a conformist personcalled a « Panurge ’s sheep »

in French language?

HEC - Centre de Langue Française - CCIP - French Culture - Lucie Chauveau© 2018 3

Syllabus• Seminar 3 - The Classic period and “absolute monarchy” –

1610 – 1789 - Louis the 13th, The 3 Musketeers, Louis the 14th, Versailles, La Fontaine, Molière, Racine, Lulli, The philosophers (Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau),…

• Part 1 – Louis the 14th (r.1661 – 1715)

• The building of Versailles (video)

• La Fontaine

• Part 2 – The End of the Kings (1710 – 1789)

• Beaumarchais and the « Marriage of Figaro »

• Seminar 4 - The Revolution and the beginning of Modern times – 1789 – 1830 : The French Revolution, Napoleon the 1st, the Romantics, Balzac, The “People’s spring”…

• Part 1 – The 1st Empire

• « Le sacre de Napoléon 1er » by Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825)

• Part 2 – The return of the Kings and Romanticism –1815 – 1848

• « La Liberté guidant le people » by Delacroix, musée du Louvre

Who were the 3 Musketeers(and did they really exist)?

Whoentertained

Versailles (and who

refused to)?

Why did Louis 14th, the « Sun King », decided to

build Versailles?How did the philosophers and the writers influence the French Revolution?

Why was Marie Antoinette so unpopular at her time

(and why is she so populartoday)?

Why is there a balloon flyingover Versailles?

Who wrote« Cinderella» and who did« The Beauty

and the Beast »?

Why did the French Revolution happened?

Who was Lafayette and what part did he

play in it?

What were the differentsteps of the French

Revolution (and why do weremember mainly the most

terrible one)?

How did Bonaparte became Napoleon (and why do French people say« It is a Berezina ! » when a catastrophy occurs)?

What is a Romanticpainting?

How did Balzac and Stendhal shaped

French novel?

4

• Seminar 5 - The second half of the 19th century : 2d Empire, Impressionists, Industrialization, Urbanization, French capitalism, Jules Verne, Emile Zola …

• Part 1 – Second Empire – 1852 - 1870

• How Haussmann reconstructed Paris

• Part 2 –The 3rd Republic - 1870- 1900

• The Impressionists (Monet, Sisley, Renoir, Pissaro, Degas…) “Impression, soleil levant”, Claude Monet (1872)

Syllabus

• Seminar 6 - Contemporary arts -1914 – 2010 : The School of Paris, La Bohême, Surrealism, Cubism, Architecture and design, centre Georges Pompidou, street art…

• Part 1 – A – “Les années folles”, Dada and the Surrealism– 1922-1939

• Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) – Fountain (1917)

• Salvador Dali – Persistance de la mémoire (1931)

• Part 1 – B - 2nd WW and the Resistance

• Charles de Gaulle, Antoine de St Exupéry, Albert Camus…

• Part 2 – Post 2nd WW – 1945-2012

• St Germain des Prés : Juliette Gréco – “Il n’y a plus d’après-…”

• Henri Cartier Bresson (1908-2004) – photograph of Parisians

• Christo, JR…HEC - Centre de Langue Française - CCIP - French Culture - Lucie Chauveau© 2018

What was Victor Hugo?

How much did Haussmann change Paris?

What didJules Verne

writeabout? How the World’s 1st department

store was opened in Paris and whowrote about it?Why

« Impressionists »? What were the Impressionists’ values

and messages?

How the youngestand most popular

French poetstopped writing at

the age of 20?

Why was Eiffel the builderof the Tower and what

else did he do?

How the Cinema wasinvented in France and what happened during

the 1st projection?

Gris, Modigliani, Picasso, Brancusi, Chagall, Zadkine, Soutine, Fujita… : who

made the « School of Paris »?

Who isthis lady?

Why are the watchesmelting (according to

Dali)?

Whocreated

the photo agency

Magnum?

What is the relation between The Little

Prince and Charles de Gaulle?

Who are the contemporain French movie

makers? Who is« JR »?

5

Assessment

• Attendance to the course = 40 %

• Final exam : 60 %

• Multiple-choice questions (60 questions – 40 minutes)

• Date : last course

HEC - Centre de Langue Française - CCIP - French Culture - Lucie Chauveau© 2018

• After each seminar, you will receive by email:– its summary (see extracts here under), – resources : Internet links, articles, videos in English… in order to prepare the next course– and a complementary bibliography to prepare your personal essay.

Sculpture of D’Artagnan, here represented as the hero of Alexandre Dumas’ novel “The 3 musketeers”

D’Artagnan was a true musketeer of the King Louis 14th, close enough to the king for being in charge of the arrest of Nicolas Fouquet. This episode, as well as his death, has been depicted by Dumas in the last of the 3 Musketeers adventures “Le Vicomte de Bragelonne”

Despite the very glamorous picture Dumas gave of his actions, he was mainly an ordinary military officer who conquered a high rank in the Musketeers, and died in Maastricht during the war against the Dutch (1673).

Early romantic paintingsGéricault

Le Radeau de la Méduse (1817-1818), by Géricault– Musée du Louvre Théodore Géricault (1791-1824) was a profoundly influential artist, painter and lithographer, known for “The Raft of the Medusa” and other paintings.

Although he died young, he became one of the pioneers of the Romantic movement.“The Raft of the Medusa” (1818–1819), which depicted the aftermath of a contemporary French shipwreck, Meduse, in which the captain had left the crew and passengers to die. The incident became a national scandal, and Géricault's dramatic interpretation presented a contemporary tragedy on a monumental scale. The painting's notoriety stemmed from its indictment of a corrupt establishment, but it also dramatized a more eternal theme, that of man's struggle with nature. It surely excited the imagination of the young Eugène Delacroix, who posed for one of the dying figures.