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FRENCH CONTENT MODULES 2018-19

The culture modules available this year (and listed below) are:

- Understanding Culture: Languages and Texts (Level 4) (30 credits) - Approaches to Language (Level 4) (30 credits) - Reading Transnational Cultures (Level 5) (30 credits)

- Film and Politics (Levels 5 & 6) (30 credits)

Level 4 Content Modules Full Module Title:

Imagining France: An Introduction to French Studies

Module Code:

LNLN022S4

Credits/Level: 30/4

Convenor: Dr Akane Kawakami

Lecturer(s): Dr Damian Catani, Dr Akane Kawakami, Dr Ann Lewis, Dr Martin Shipway

Entrance Requirements:

No language other than English is required

Day/Time:

Monday/7.40 to 9.00pm; Term 1 & 2

Module Description:

This module aims to introduce students to key artefacts – novels, socio-political writings, paintings, short stories, and philosophical fiction – from French and francophone culture up to the present day. We will consider why these artefacts may be considered important for an understanding of what may be meant or imagined by the notion of ‘Frenchness’ past and present. We will be moving across centuries and disciplines, from the eighteenth-century to the present day; all the material we cover is characterised by its concern with France’s various self-definitions. The module will also incorporate a number of study skills sessions (on essay-writing, commentary, bibliography and referencing).

Syllabus:

Section 1: Term 1, Weeks 1-5:

Conflict and the Fracturing of National Identity (Dr Damian Catani)

These sessions examine the notion of a fractured French identity, or France divided against itself, which questions and subverts its core Republican belief in a nationally cohesive, unifying ideology. A selective exploration of cultural history and novels relating to two key socio-political conflicts brings this fractured sense of national identity into sharp relief: the first, is the Paris Commune of 1871, a breakaway and self-governing working-class faction that emerged from the ashes of the Franco-Prussian War only to be brutally crushed by the new Republican government; the second, is the First World War (1914-18), a conflict of unprecedented barbarity that led an entire generation of young Frenchmen to become profoundly disillusioned with the traditional patriotic virtues of military heroism and glory.

Primary texts (selected chapters):

Emile Zola: La Débâcle, (1892), (translated as The Downfall)

Louis-Ferdinand Céline: Voyage au bout de la nuit (1932), (translated as Journey to the end of the night)

John M. Merriman: Massacre: The Life and Death of the Paris Commune (Yale University Press, 2014)

Vincent Sherry (ed.): The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of the First World War (Cambridge University Press, 2005)


Places: Paris or the Provinces? (Dr Akane Kawakami)

Paris and its artefacts (the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe) are often used as a symbol of France, and the country often seems to be more obviously centralised than, for instance, the UK. Yet the culture of the provinces, both the smaller towns and the countryside, are also inextricably linked to a perceived French identity. In this section we will examine texts describing different kinds of French places, and explore the implications of these depictions for various notions of ‘Frenchness’. All texts are available in English translation.

Primary texts:

Guy de Maupassant, La Parure et autres scènes de la vie parisienne (1885)

-– English translation: A Parisian Affair and Other Stories (Penguin Classics)

Alphonse Daudet, Lettres de mon moulin (1869)

–- English translation: Letters from my Windmill (Penguin Classics, 2007)

Suggested secondary reading:

Robert Alter, Imagined Cities: Urban experience and the Language of the Novel (2005)

Christopher Prendergast, Paris in the Nineteenth Century (1992)

John West-Sooby, ed., Images of the City in Nineteenth-Century France (1998)


‘Otherness’: Imagining the Outsider’s View in Eighteenth-Century France (Dr Ann Lewis)

Eighteenth-century French writers frequently use the fictional perspective of a foreign or exotic observer to explore, defamiliarize and satirize aspects of their own culture. In this part of the course, we will focus on several key texts from this period (by some of the most celebrated writers of the Enlightenment), to examine this very

particular mode of exploring ‘Frenchness’.

Primary Texts:

Voltaire, ‘L’Ingénu’ (1767), in Romans et contes (GF, Garnier-Flammarion)

– English translation : ‘The Ingenu’ in Candide and Other Stories, tr. Roger Pearson (Oxford World Classics, 2006)

Graffigny, Lettres d’une Péruvienne (1747, rev. ed. 1752)

– English translation: Letters of a Peruvian Woman, tr. Jonathan Mallinson (Oxford World Classics)

Suggested Secondary Reading:

John S. Clouston, Voltaire’s Binary Masterpiece: ‘L’Ingénu’ Reconsidered (Peter Lang, 1986)

Roger Pearson, The Fables of Reason: A Study of Voltaire’s ‘Contes philosophiques’ (Clarendon Press, 1993), relevant sections

Robin Howells, Playing Simplicity: Polemical Stupidity in the Writing of the French Enlightenment (Peter Lang, 2002), relevant sections

Janet Gurkin Altman, ‘A Woman’s Place in the Enlightenment Sun: The Case of F. de Graffigny’, Romance Quarterly, 38 (1991), 261-72

Julia Douthwaite, ‘Relocating the Exotic Other in Graffigny’s Lettres d’une Péruvienne’, Romanic Review, 82 (1991), 456-74

Downing Thomas, ‘Economy and Identity in Graffigny’s Lettres d’une Péruvienne’, South Central Review, 10:4 (1993), 55-72

Section 4, Term 2, Weeks 7-11:

Mapping France (Dr Martin Shipway)

In this section of the course, we look at ways in which French social, cultural and political space have been mapped since the late nineteenth century. In addition to the core texts listed below, we will use a variety of materials (to be distributed in class or via Moodle) to illustrate how the concept of France, French identities and the non-French ‘other’ have been defined and articulated, whether via maps of the French ‘hexagone’, through appeals to national writing, or through the myth of a colonial ‘greater France’.

Primary texts

Ernest Renan, ‘What is a Nation?’, extract from Homi Bhabha, ed., Nation and Narration (London: Routledge, 1990) (available in #Reading Room Collection and on Moodle)

Antoine Prost, ‘The Contribution of the Republican Primary School to French National Identity’, extract from Antoine Prost, Republican Identities in War and Peace: Representations of France in the 19th and 20th Centuries (Oxford: Berg, 2002) (available in #Reading

Room Collection and on Moodle)

Charles de Gaulle -- extracts from speeches, memoirs and film (to be distributed in class and/or made available on Moodle).


Benedict Anderson (2nd or 3rd ed.), Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991, 2006)

Rod Kedward, La Vie en bleu: France and the French since 1900 (London: Penguin, 2005)

Assessment:

Assessment: One commentary in English (500-1000 words, 10%) due on the Monday of Reading Week of Term 1. One piece of work on ‘Plagiarism & Referencing’ – compulsory but not assessed, due on the last day of Term 1. If you do not complete this assignment, your first essay (due in January) will NOT be marked. Two essays in English (2000 words each, 35% each), one due on the first day of Term 2, the other due at on the first day of Term 3. One unseen in-class test in English or French (20%) under exam conditions, in Week 11 of Term 2. The essay questions will be available via Moodle several weeks in advance of the deadline. The essays must also be submitted via Moodle, and before the deadline, which will be clearly stated when the questions are announced.

Essential Texts:

See the ‘primary reading’ lists of each section

Other Important Information:

The module is taught and assessed entirely in English. Titles which appear in French in the following outline will be studied in English translation, although you are encouraged to make use of the original French texts too if you are able. You are expected, except where indicated below, to purchase the texts which are specified as primary texts, and you are expected also to have read these primary texts in advance of the relevant section of the module. All the primary texts (including films) will be available in the Library, and some (those you are not expected to purchase) will also be available in the Library Reading Room Collection and also for electronic access via Moodle. You are not expected to purchase any of the secondary texts, which are merely suggestions for background reading.

Full Module Title:

Understanding Culture: Languages and Texts

Module Code:

LNLN021S4

Credits/Level: 30 credits, Level 4

Convenor: Dr Martin Shipway

Lecturer(s): Emily Baker, Dr Mari Paz Balibrea, Dr Martin Shipway, Dr John Walker

Entrance Requirement:

No language requirement other than English

Day/Time:

Fridays, 6.00-7.20pm; Term 1 & 2

Module Description:

This module will provide you with an introduction to what it means to study languages and cultures. We will explore the interdisciplinary and cross-cultural nature of language and cultural study by focusing on different kinds of text – literary, filmic, historical, visual – from a variety of different cultural contexts: French-, German-, Portuguese and Spanish-speaking. You will learn about the practical and theoretical tools you need to engage with these texts and the cultural contexts which produced them and to work with these tools in your own writing.

Syllabus:

Term One

06.10.17 Introduction to Studying Languages and Cultures

JW

13.10.17 Languages, Cultures and Literature JW

20.10.17 Reading Kafka (Die Verwandlung / Metamorphosis) Please read the story before class: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/5200/5200-h/5200-h.htm

JW

27.10.17 Reading Kafka (Das Urteil /The Judgement) Please read the story before class: http://www.franzkafkastories.com/shortStories.php?story_id =kafka_the_judgement

JW

03.11.17 Reading Kafka (Das Urteil /The Judgement) JW

10.11.17 Reading Week

17.11.17 Languages, Cultures and Film EB

24.11.17 Watching Alea and Tabío (Strawberry and Chocolate / Fresa y Chocolate) Please watch this film in advance of the class: it is available on DVD.

EB

01.12.17 Watching Alea and Tabío (Strawberry and Chocolate / Fresa y Chocolate)

EB

08.12.17 Watching Almodóvar (Todo sobre mi madre / All about my mother) Please watch this film in advance of the class: it is available on DVD

MPB

15.12.17 Watching Almodóvar (Todo sobre mi madre / All about my mother)

MPB

Term Two

12.01.18 Languages, Cultures and History MS

19.01.18 Writing French defeat, occupation and resistance: Marc Bloch, Etrange défaite / Strange Defeat Please read as much as possible before the class, focusing on chapter 3 (available via Moodle)

MS

26,01.18 Remembering French defeat, occupation and resistance: Marcel Ophüls, Le chagrin et la pitié / The Sorrow and the Pity Please watch

MS

this film (or at least part 2) in advance of the class: it is available on DVD.

02.02.18 France and Algeria: Julien Duvivier, Pépé Le Moko ; Gillo Pontecorvo, La Bataille d’Alger / The Battle of Algiers Please watch The Battle of Algiers in advance of the class: it is available on DVD.

MS

09.02.18 France and Algeria: Gillo Pontecorvo, La Bataille d’Alger / The Battle of Algiers

MS

16.02.18 Reading Week

23.02.18 Understanding Visual Cultures tbc





Assessment:

1. A 500 word assessment task to be submitted by Friday November 10 2017. This is worth 20% of the mark for the module.

2. A 500 word assessment task to be submitted by Friday 12 January 2018. This is worth 20% of the mark for the module.

3. A 1,500 word essay to be submitted on Friday 27 April 2018. This is worth 30% of the mark for the module.

4. A 1,500 word essay to be submitted on Friday 25 May 2018. This is worth 30% of the mark for the module.

Essential Texts: Franz Kafka, Die Verwandlung / Metamorphosis Franz Kafka, Das Urteil / The Judgement Alea and Tabío, Strawberry and Chocolate / Fresa y Chocolate Pedro Almodóvar, Todo sobre mi madre / All About my Mother https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ondemand/index.php/prog/00104F91?bcast=72380164 Marc Bloch, Etrange défaite / Strange Defeat Marcel Ophüls, Le chagrin et la pitié / The Sorrow and the Pity Julien Duvivier, Pépé Le Moko Gillo Pontecorvo, La Bataille d’Alger / The Battle of Algiers Rod Kedward, La Vie en bleu: France and the French since 1900 (Penguin, 2005

https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ondemand/index.php/prog/00104F91?bcast=72380164

https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ondemand/index.php/prog/00104F91?bcast=72380164

French 5 Content Modules

Full Module Title:

Reading the Signs: Text and Image in French Culture

Module Code: AREL106S5

Credits/Level: 30/5

Convenor: Dr Ann Lewis ([email protected])

Lecturer(s): Dr Damian Catani, Dr Akane Kawakami, Dr Ann Lewis, Dr Martin Shipway


None

Day/Time: Tuesday/6.00-7.20pm, Terms 1 and 2

Module Description:

Module Description and Aims This team-taught module will focus on an increasingly important area of research in French studies: visual culture, and more specifically, the relationship between word and image. The module will introduce a range of frameworks for exploring and analysing this relationship, in different historical, philosophical, political, literary and artistic contexts, from the eighteenth to twentieth centuries. Following an introductory session, the module will be divided into four major sections, each exploring interactions between verbal and visual media differently. First, by considering illustration and its relation to the project of representing knowledge in the major Enlightenment project, the Encyclopédie. Secondly, by analysing the relationship between text and photographic images within the genre of life writing in the twentieth century, with particular reference to the works of Hervé Guibert. Thirdly, in an exploration of the interaction between the visual and verbal in twentieth-century literature (including poems by Guillaume Apollinaire and a novel by the Surrealist writer André Breton). The final section will explore the articulation of political and ideological themes within a range of ‘official’ symbols, for example, in maps and posters and their texts.

Syllabus: Provisional syllabus (to be taught over Terms 1 and 2): 5 sessions: Introduction, and Diderot’s Encyclopédie and its Plates: Embodying Knowledge (AL)

mailto:[email protected]

The Encyclopédie ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, edited by Diderot and d’Alembert (published between 1751-72), was a daring and ambitious publishing venture, and a major project of the French Enlightenment. In addition to 17 volumes of articles, there were 11 volumes of plates, which have attracted considerable interest by on the part of historians and literary critics. This section of the module will examine the significance of the illustrations, their captions, and their relation to the text of the Encyclopédie, focusing on a selection of specific articles and images. 5 sessions: Photography and Self-Writing in the Twentieth Century (AK) This section will examine the relationships that can hold between text and photographic image in the genre of self-writing. Are photography and writing rivals in this field, or do they complement each other? We will be focusing on two separate texts by Hervé Guibert: L’Image fantôme and Le Seul visage, together with a range of other photographs by Guibert. 5 sessions: Negotiating Urban Modernity: Text and Image Redefined (DC) This section examines how text-image relations were redefined as part of a deliberate strategy to negotiate and combat the alienating effects of early twentieth-century urban modernity. First, we will explore the forefather of Surrealism Guillaume Apollinaire’s ‘concrete poems’ Calligrammes, in which he offers us innovative pictorial representations of words as suggestive, multi-layered responses to an increasingly disconcerting urban space. Secondly, we will examine Nadja, the novel by leading Surrealist writer and theorist André Breton, which brings into productive dialogue text and photographs set in modern Paris as a dual prism through which to capture and understand the psychological alienation experienced by its central protagonist. 5 sessions: Myths and Symbols of the Republic (MS) This section of the module explores some of the ways in which Republican doctrine and identities have been transmitted in posters, maps, official symbols (e.g. the drapeau tricolore, Marianne) and other visual media. Students will also consider ways in which Republican ideology was negated during the Vichy period, and co- opted by colonialism.

Assessment Table:

Assignment Description Weighting

Essay 1 2000 words 30%

Essay 2 2000 words 30%

In-class test 1.5 hours 40%

Essential Texts:

First section ‘Diderot’s Encyclopédie and its Plates’: Further details of primary reading will be provided at the start of the course, and key

materials will be made available on Moodle. Set texts for the second section ‘Photography and Self-Writing’:

Hervé Guibert, L’Image fantôme (Les Éditions de Minuit, 1981). English translation: Ghost Image, trans by Robert Bononno (University of Chicago Press, 1996)

Hervé Guibert, Le Seul visage (Les Éditions de minuit, 1984)

Collection of photos by Hervé Guibert [These can be found in Birkbeck Library, including the photo collection.] Set texts for third section ‘Negotiating Urban Modernity’:

A selection of poems from Apollinaire’s Calligrammes will be provided on Moodle.

André Bréton, Nadja (1928) (Folio Gallimard edition, 1964) [extracts will be provided on Moodle].

Fourth section ‘Myths and Symbols of the Republic’: A selection of primary materials will be provided on Moodle and/or in class. Sample secondary reading

Barthes, Roland, Mythologies (1957)

Boulé, Jean-Pierre, Hervé Guibert. Voices of the Self (1991)

Brewer and Hayes, eds, Using the Encyclopédie, Ways of Knowing, Ways of Reading, SVEC 2002:05

Davis, Whitney, A General Theory of Visual Culture (2011)

Edwards, Nathalie, Amy L. Hubbell and Ann Miller, eds, Textual and Visual Selves: Photography, Film and Comic Art in French Autobiography (2011)

Kawakami, Akane, Photobiography: Photographic Self-Writing in Proust, Guibert, Ernaux, Macé (2013)

Mitchell, W. J. T., Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation (1994)

----- Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology (1986)

Wall, Anthony, Words and Images: A French Rendezvous (2010)

Liz Wells, ed., Photography: A Critical Introduction (2004)

Werner, Stephen, Blueprint: A Study of Diderot and the Encylopédie Plates (1993)

Full Module Title: Contemporary French Literature

Module Code: ARCL023H5

Credits / Level: 15 credits, Level 5

Convenor: Dr Nathalie Wourm

Lecturer(s): Dr Akane Kawakami, Dr Nathalie Wourm

Entrance requirements:

None

Day / Time /Term: Thursday 6-7.20pm, Term 1 only

Module Description:

What is happening in French literature right now? Who are the most interesting and innovative writers of novels, short stories and poetry in

twenty-first century France? We will be looking at the works of some of the most striking contemporary literary figures and discussing them in their cultural and theoretical contexts, as well as through the lens of literary history. You will be able to make comparisons with current literary developments in other languages, and you will gain an insight into what is happening today in literary culture in France. The course is taught and assessed in English. Books will be studied in both their French and English versions so that students with no French can take the module.

Syllabus: Provisional outline:

Term 2:

Week 1 : Introduction

Week 2 : Annie Ernaux, La femme gelée

Week 3 : Annie Ernaux, Passion simple

Week 4 : Marie NDiaye, En famille

Week 5 : Leïla Slimani, Chanson douce

Week 6 : Reading Week

Week 7 : Introduction to current poetic practice in France

Week 8 : Olivier Cadiot

Week 9 : Anne Portugal

Week 10 : Pierre Alferi

Week 11 : Other developments

Assessment:

One essay (2500 words, 100% of final assessment)

Essays can be written in either English or French.


Essay 2500 words 100%

Essential Texts: Primary texts

Annie Ernaux, La femme gelée (1987), tr. A Frozen Woman, by Linda

Coverdale (London: Seven Stories Press, 1996)

Annie Ernaux, Passion simple (1991), tr. Positions, by Tanya Leslie

(London: Quartet Books. 1991)

Marie NDiaye, En famille (1991), tr. Among Family by Heather Doyal

(Angela Royal Publishing, 1997)

Leïla Slimani, Chanson douce, trans. Lullaby by Sam Taylor (Faber

and Faber, 2017)

In the event that some of the following works are no longer available or out of stock, extracts will be provided by the lecturer.

Olivier Cadiot, Le Colonel des Zouaves (1997), tr. Colonel Zoo

(2006)

Pierre Alferi, Sentimentale Journée (1997), tr. Night and Day (2013)

Anne Portugal, Définitif Bob (2002), tr. Absolute Bob (2010)


Contemporary novel section:

Colette Sarrey-Strack, Fictions contemporaines au féminin: Marie

Darrieusecq, Marie Ndiaye, Marie Nimier, Marie Redonnet (2002)

Siobhan McIlvenney, Annie Ernaux: The Return to Origins (LUP,

2001)

Lyn Thomas, Annie Ernaux: An Introduction to the Writer and her

Audience (Berg, 1999)

Akane Kawakami, ‘‘Annie Ernaux, 1989: Diaries, Photographic Writing

and Self-Vivisection’, Nottingham French Studies, 53 (2014), 232-46.

Shirley Jordan, Marie NDiaye: Inhospitable Fictions (Legenda, 2017)

Andrew Asibong, Marie NDiaye: Blankness and Recognition (LUP,

2013)

[More titles will be suggested during the course of the module.]

Contemporary poetry section:

JÉRÔME GAME, ed. Porous Boundaries: Texts and Images in

Twentieth-Century French Culture. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2007.

MICHAEL BROPHY et MARY GALLAGHER, eds. Sens et présence

du sujet poétique: La poésie de la France et du monde francophone

depuis 1980. Brill, 2006.

MICHAEL SHERINGHAM. Everyday Life: Theories and Practices from

Surrealism to the Present, Oxford University Press, 2006, 440 pp.

Paperback June 2009. French Translation, Traversées du quotidien-

des surréalistes aux postmodernes, tr. Maryline Heck and Jeanne-

Marie Hostiou, Presses Universitaires de France, collection ‘Lignes

d’Art’, 416pp, 2013.

GAME, JÉRÔME. Poetic Becomings Studies in Contemporary French

Literature. Peter Lang, 2011.

RUFFEL, DAVID. “Une Littérature Contextuelle”. Littérature 160

(2010): 61–73.

BAETENS, JAN, and DOUGLAS BASFORD. “Pierre Alferi's

"allofiction": A Poetics of the Controlled Skid”.SubStance 39.3 (2010):

66–77.

MICHAEL SHERINGHAM. ‘Survivance et recrudescence de l’avant-

garde, ou l’influence de Pierre Alferi sur André Breton’ in Wolfgang

Asholt (ed.), Avantgarde und Modernismus : Dezentrierung,

Subversion und Transformation im Literarisch-Küntstlerischen, Berlin /

Boston, de Gruyter, 2014, pp. 89-105.

MICHAEL SHERINGHAM. ‘Pierre Alferi and the Poetics of the

Dissolve: Film and Visual Media in Sentimentale Journée’, in Naomi

Segal and Gill Rye (eds), ‘When Familiar Meanings Dissolve ...’

Essays in French Studies in Memory of Malcolm Bowie, Oxford,

Bern… Peter Lang, p. 37-53.

GAME, JÉRÔME. “In & Out, Ou Comment Sortir Du Livre Pour Mieux

Y Retourner — "et Réciproquement"”. Littérature 160 (2010): 44–53.

DISSON, AGNÈS, and ROXANNE LAPIDUS. “Pierre Alferi:

Compressing and Disconnecting”. SubStance 39.3 (2010): 78–90.

PINSON, JEAN-CLAUDE. “Poésie Pour « Un Peuple Qui Manque

»”. Littérature 110 (1998): 22–37.

NATHALIE WOURM. "Anticapitalism and the Poetic Function of

Language." L'Esprit Créateur 49.2 (2009): 119-131.

NATHALIE WOURM. 'On Just the Other Side of Intimacy: Pierre

Alferi's La Protection des Animaux', Nottingham French Studies, 2011,

50:3, 128-138.

NATHALIE WOURM. 'Non-Readings, Misreadings, Unreadings:

Deleuze and Cadiot on Robinson Crusoe and Capitalism', French

Literature Series, 2010, XXXVII, 177-190.

Full Module Title: Dreaming the Self: From the Enlightenment to Romanticism


Credits/Level: 15/5

Convenor: Dr Ann Lewis

Lecturer(s): Dr Ann Lewis, Dr Damian Catani


None

Day/Time: Thursday 6.00-7.20 pm Term 2 only

Module Description:

In this module we will examine how the psychological category of the dream is used to explore notions of the self in literary and philosophical writing from the French Enlightenment to the Romantic period. The first section of the module brings together two towering figures of the French eighteenth-century: Diderot (Le Rêve de d’Alembert, 1769) and Rousseau (Rêveries d’un promeneur solitaire, 1776-78). These texts deploy innovative and experimental literary forms – structured around the notion of the dream or ‘rêverie’ – in order to question what constitutes selfhood or identity (for example, the relation of the individual self to its own past and present, to the ‘Other’ of society, and the relation between ‘thought’, body and soul). By using fragmentary forms, each text explores, and questions, the idea of a ‘unified self’.

In the second part of the module we will look at Romantic, as opposed to Enlightenment, conceptions of the dream. As key writers of the Romantic movement, Gautier and Nerval rehabilitate dream as a neglected dimension of human experience that serves two important functions: first, to counterbalance a perceived Enlightenment overemphasis on the conscious, rational Self, and secondly, to free modern man from the shackles of a utilitarian, mercantile society. Thus, by offering us a tantalising glimpse into a liberating dream world of exotic, supernatural fantasy and heightened aesthetic experience, Gautier’s Le Pied de Momie (1840) provides a necessary antidote to a superficial industrial modernity, while in Aurélia (1855) Nerval seeks to counter the stigmatising rationalism of doctors who pathologise his dreams as a sign of insanity by defending these dreams as a rich storehouse of self-knowledge and a stimulus to imaginative artistic creation. Both these writers, therefore, endeavour to revalorise those ‘irrational’, visionary aspects of dreams that had largely been ignored in the previous era.

This module will be taught and assessed in English (see below, ‘Assessment Table’, for further details regarding essays). Titles which appear in French in the following outline will be studied in French. Students with no French may follow by means of an English translation.

Syllabus:

Set texts:

Denis Diderot, Le Rêve de d’Alembert (ed. by Colas Duflo, GF Flammarion, 2002) [Eng. translation: Rameau’s Nephew and Diderot’s Dream, Penguin Classics, tr. by Leonard Tancock, reprint 2004]

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire (ed. by E. Leborgne, GF-Flammarion, 2006) [Eng. translation: Reveries of the Solitary Walker, Penguin Classics, tr. by Peter France, reprint 2004]

Théophile Gautier: Le Pied de momie (Eng. translation: The Mummy’s foot]. Primary text provided.

Gérard de Nerval: Aurelia [Eng. translation by Sieburth]. Primary text provided.

Provisional outline: Week 1: Introduction Week 2: Diderot, Le Rêve de d’Alembert [D’Alembert’s Dream] Week 3: Diderot, Le Rêve de d’Alembert [D’Alembert’s Dream] Week 4: Rousseau, Rêveries d’un promeneur solitaire [The Reveries of a Solitary Walker] Week 5: Rousseau, Rêveries d’un promeneur solitaire [The Reveries of a Solitary Walker] Reading Week Week 7: Gautier, Le Pied de momie [The Mummy’s foot] Week 8: Gautier, Le Pied de momie [The Mummy’s foot] Week 9: Nerval, Aurélia Week 10: Nerval, Aurélia, Conclusion, Revision Week 11: in-class test. Sample Reading List General: Charles Taylor, The Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity (1989) Jerrold Seigel, The Idea of the Self: Thought and Experience in Western Europe since the Seventeenth Century (2005) Diderot: Wilda Anderson, Diderot’s Dream (1990), Chapter 2, pp.42-76 ----- ‘Diderot’s Laboratory of Sensibility’, Yale French Studies, 67 (1984), 72-91 Carol Sherman, Diderot and the Art of Dialogue (1976), Chapter 3 Peter France, Diderot (Past Masters, OUP, 1983) Rousseau: David Williams, Rousseau: ‘Les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire’ (Grant & Cutler, 1984) Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Sources of the Self, ed. by Timothy O’Hagan (Ashgate, 1997) – series of articles Jean Starobinski, Jean-Jacques Rousseau: La Transparence et l’obstacle (1971), ‘Rêverie et transmutation’ [also in translation: Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Transparency and Obstruction, tr. by Arthur Goldhammer (1988)] Robert Wokler, Rousseau: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2001)

Gautier:

Paul Bénichou, L’École du désenchantement: Sainte-Beuve, Nodier, Musset, Nerval, Gautier (Paris: Gallimard, 1992) [also includes

chapter on Nerval]

Pierre-Georges Castex, Le Conte fantastique en France de Nodier à Maupassant (Paris : Jose Corti, 1951)

Richard Hobbs, ed., From Balzac to Zola: Selected Short Stories (Bristol Classic Press, 1992)

Valerie Shaw, The Short Story: A Critical Introduction (London: Longman, 1983)

Nerval:

William Beauchamp, The Style of Nerval’s ‘Aurélia’ (The Hague: Mouton, 1976)

Frederic Burwick, Poetic Madness and the Romantic Imagination (Penn State, 1996) [excellent chapter on Nerval]

Norma Rinsler, Gérard de Nerval (London: Athlone Press, 1973)

Richard Sieburth, Nerval, Selected Writings (Penguin Classics: 1999) [includes English translation of Aurélia]

Assessment Table:

One essay (written in English or in French) of 2500 words [worth 60% of the overall mark] One unseen in-class test (one and a half hours) in English or French [worth 40% of the overall mark] to be answered in class (date tbc).

Essential Texts: Please see ‘Syllabus’ for details of the set texts.

Full Module Title:

French Cinema: History, Practice, Analysis

Module Code:

LNLN027S5

Credits/Level: 30/5

Convenor: Michael Temple

Lecturer(s): Michael Temple


none

Day/Time:

Monday/6-9pm; Term 1 only

Module Description:

French Cinema: History, Practice, Analysis will introduce students to the study of French cinema from its origins to the present day. In order to understand the certainty of French cinema in the history of film, we will explore four approaches covering the four major areas of cinema studies. ‘What makes cinema happen?’, ‘Who makes films?’, ‘What films are made?’, and ‘How is cinema perceived?’ Films studied will vary from year to year, but we always look at a wide range of French cinema from different periods and in different genres. All film material will be sub-titled for English speakers. Teaching and learning involves variety of methods including presentations, pair/group work, class discussions, screenings, independent study outside of class, and individual tutorials.

Indicative Content: *Structures: the economic infrastructure, legal framework, and commercial culture (‘Business’); and the influence of scientific

innovation and technological change (‘Technology’) which create cinema *People: the human agency in the film-making process; artists, artisans, and entrepreneurs; the different métiers of cinema; working communities and professional institutions *Forms: the diversity of film production; indigenous and international idioms; dominant and marginal forms, popular and avant-garde tendencies; key films that exemplify major trends and turning-points *Reflections: the range of cinema audiences and the experience of film-going (‘Spectators’); varieties of film-criticism and the function of theory (‘Debates’).

Assessment:


Theoretical Essay 2000 words 40%

Theoretical Essay 3000 words 60%

Level 6 Content Modules Full Module Title: Racine

Module Code: AREL091H6

Credits/Level: 15/6

Convenor: Dr Jean Braybrook

Lecturer(s): Dr Jean Braybrook


Open enrolment; Students should be taking French 4, or above

Day/Time:

Monday, 7.40-9pm Term 1 only (10 sessions)

Module Description:

Jean Racine is a seventeenth-century playwright whose five-act tragedies, in alexandrines, are renowned for the beauty of their language and form. He affords the audience or reader insights into the human condition and into emotions such as jealousy. He shows men and women in the grip of passions they cannot control or bowing down to horrific circumstances. Even as they are destroyed, the characters prove capable of lucidity. Teaching is in French; assignments may be completed in French or English.

Syllabus:

Texts to be read will be selected from the following: Andromaque; Britannicus; Bérénice; Bajazet; Phèdre; Athalie. These are all available in paperback; make sure you buy editions with line numbering.

Assessment:

One in-class exercise (40% of the total assessment); one 2500-word essay (60% of the total assessment).

Essential Secondary Reading:

Roland Barthes, Sur Racine (Paris, Seuil, 1979) Georges Forestier, Jean Racine (Paris, Gallimard, 2006) Odette de Mourgues, Racine, or The Triumph of Relevance (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1967)

Full Module Title:

Translation from and into French

Module Code: LNLN005S6

Credits/Level: 30 Credits /Level 6

Convenor: Dr Jean Braybrook

Lecturer(s): Dr Jean Braybrook and Dr Nathalie Wourm


French 5 is highly desirable

Day/ Time:

Tuesday 6-7.20pm (Terms 1 and 2; 20 sessions)

Module Description:

In this module we aim to study the theory and practice of translation from and into French, with an emphasis on practical tasks. Both literary and non-literary texts will be studied. Some poetry may be included. Assignments are given most weeks of the course. One longer translation (about 1000 words) together with brief footnotes and a commentary of 800 words (covering for instance features difficult to translate) is to be submitted at the end of Term 2.

Syllabus:

S. Hervey and I. Higgins, Thinking Translation (Routledge, 2002)

Assessment:

A three-hour examination represents 60% of the total assessment. It comprises two passages for translation, one English into French, the other French into English. Students are allowed to take a monolingual (French/French or English/English) Petit Robert-type dictionary into the examination. They should indicate on their exam paper which sort of dictionary they have used. Coursework represents the remaining 40% of the assessment. Coursework consists of a Long Translation and commentary (1000 words and 800 words), worth 25%, and In-class assessment (SIX 200-word translations, one of which is a mock examination) worth 15%.

Essential Texts:

S. Hervey and I. Higgins, Thinking Translation (2002)

Other Important Information:

You may find it helpful and amusing to read: David Bellos, Is That a Fish in Your Ear? (Penguin, 2011).

Full Module Title

The French Novel of Disillusionment

Module Code AREL049H6

Credits/Level 15 / 6

Convenor/Lecturer Dr Damian Catani

Entrance Requirements

n/a

Day Tuesday

Time

6-7.30pm, Term 3 only

Module Description

This module aims to examine the notion of disillusionment as figured by three representative novelists from three different centuries in the post-Enlightenment era: Musset, Céline and Houellebecq. Analysis of the novels will be clustered around different articulations of disillusionment (‘mal de siecle’, ‘ennui’, ‘nihilism’) and will also be contextualised, where appropriate, by historical causes of this disillusionment: post-Napoleonic defeatism (Musset); post-war trauma and economic Depression (Céline); the alienation of late twentieth-century bourgeois technocratic society (Houellebecq).

The course will be taught primarily in French and the primary texts will be studied in French.

Assessment Table


Essay 2,500 words 60%

In class-test commentary 40%

Essential Texts

Primary texts :

Musset: Les Confessions d’un enfant du siècle (1836) Céline: Voyage au bout de la nuit (1932) Houellebecq: Les particules élémentaires (1998) A full list of suggested secondary reading will be distributed at the start of the course

Full Module Title

Advanced French Seminar: Révolutions

Module Code

tbc, new in 2017

Credits/Level 30 credits, Level 6


Lecturer(s): Dr Jean Braybrook, Dr Damian Catani, Dr Ann Lewis, Dr Martin Shipway, Dr Nathalie Wourm


A pass in French 4 (or equivalent)

Day/Time:

Tuesdays, 7.40-9.00; Terms 1 & 2

Module Description:

Advanced French Seminar is intended for students with a high level of French, and to take the module you must have reached a level equivalent to that of French 4, or higher. It is usually taken in the final year of your studies. The course, taught over terms 1 and 2, is

divided into a number of short sections, each of which approaches the theme of ‘Révolutions’ from a particular disciplinary perspective, and through the study and close reading of a number of core texts. The course is also intended to help you to develop your French language skills, and to this end is entirely taught and assessed in French. The main assessment is a 5000-word research essay, written in French, relating one of the topic areas you have covered in the course. You will also be examined orally in French on your essay and on other aspects of the course in a viva voce examination taken in the third term. Some classes will take the form of research skills workshops to help you with the research essay; and you will also receive tutorials from a supervisor, normally the person who has taught the topic you have chosen.

NB this module replaces Mémoire en français, and if you have already taken that module, you may not take Advanced French Seminar.

Syllabus:

The course is divided into five sections, each lasting four weeks, each including an element of research skills. These are as follows:

1. Révolution et / and Renaissance (Term One, weeks 1-4)

Progressing by looking backwards: the French sixteenth century and imitation of classical literature and art.

The period known as the French Renaissance (1530-1598) is indeed characterized by rebirth; but it is founded on a spurning of the Middle Ages, a revival of Greek and Latin sources and a passion for all things classical. Sixteenth-century French is remarkably rich; Joachim du Bellay is largely responsible for encouraging its adornment by means of borrowing from the ancients and from Italian. His friend Pierre de Ronsard founds the Pléiade, a group of seven poets headed by him, and makes use of classical myth and legend in his wonderful love poetry and elsewhere.

2. Les romans de Louis-Ferdinand Céline: une révolution esthétique et socio-politique / The Novels of Louis-Ferdinand Céline: a socio-political and aesthetic revolution (Term One, weeks 5, 7-9)

Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s ground-breaking novel, Voyage au bout de la nuit (1932) was an overnight critical and commercial sensation, completely redefining the novel in both aesthetic and socio-political terms in France and even abroad. The nihilistic revolt of its semi-autobiographical anti-hero, its depiction of the futility of war and colonialism and the desperate plight of the social underclass in the Depression era were all radically new novelistic themes. This section of the course will primarily examine Céline’s stylistic and socio-political revolution via two of his major works: Voyage au bout de la nuit (1932) and his follow-up novel Mort à crédit (1936), his semi-autobiographical depiction of the popular Belle Époque Paris which many critics consider to be his masterpiece

3. La Révolution des nationalismes afro-asiatiques vue par les intellectuels / Afro-Asian Nationalist Revolution as seen by the intellectuals (Term One, weeks 10-11, Term Two, weeks 1-2)

In this part of the course, we will study French decolonisation, principally but not entirely focused on the war of Algerian independence (1954-1962), as seen through the writings of a number of key intellectual figures writing in the 1950s and early 1960s. We will consider the extent to which these writers can be said to have influenced the course of the war and of France’s eventual acquiescence in what French opinion increasingly recognised as the ‘courant de l’histoire’ (the ‘tide of history’).

4. L’observation culturelle à Paris, capitale révolutionnaire / Cultural Observation in Revolutionary Paris (Term Two, weeks 3-5, 7)

This section will focus on several literary texts by Louis-Sébastien Mercier and Rétif de la Bretonne, written just before and during the French Revolution, which attempt to explore and describe Paris at a moment of political and social crisis, and in doing so, transform the way in which the city could be written about.

5. Révolutions poétiques et politique en France au tournant du 21ème siècle / Poetic revolutions and politics in France at the turn of the 21st century (Term Two, weeks 8-11)

These sessions will be devoted to revolutions in contemporary French poetry and their political significance. Various facets will be considered, such as the rejection of Roman Jakobson’s poetic function of language as representing the bourgeois appropriation of literature in France, the rebellion against new lyricism as politically reactionary, the advent of left-wing poetry with Tarnac and the Comité Invisible as symbols of revolution, and the end of the avant-gardes as an act of dehierarchisation in the Deleuzian sense.

Assessment:

1. Literature review, in French, 2000 words, 20%, due January 2017

2. Research Essay, in French, 5000 words, 60%, due May 2017

3. Viva voce examination, in French, 20 minutes, June 2017

NB All three elements of the course must be passed in order to pass the module overall.

Essential Texts: 1. Révolution et Renaissance (Term One, weeks 1-4)

Joachim du Bellay, La Defence et illustration de la langue françoyse (1549) Pierre de Ronsard, Les Amours, selected poems

Margaret W. Ferguson, Trials of Desire: Renaissance Defenses of Poetry (1983) ________ Dido’s Daughters: Literacy, Gender and Empire in Early Modern England and France (2003) Thomas M. Greene, The Light in Troy: Imitation and Discovery in Renaissance Poetry (1982)

2. Les romans de Louis-Ferdinand Céline: une révolution esthétique et socio-politique

Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Voyage au bout de la nuit (1932)

__________ Mort à crédit (1936)

Julia Kristeva: Powers of Horror: an essay on abjection (1980) Philippe Watts: Allegories of the Purge: how literature responded to the postwar trials of writers and intellectuals in France (1999)

3. La Révolution des nationalismes afro-asiatiques vue par les intellectuels

Albert Camus, Actuelles III : Chroniques algériennes 1939-1958 (1958) Aimé Césaire, Discours sur le colonialisme (1950) Albert Memmi, Portrait du colonisé, précédé du Portrait du colonisateur (1957) Frantz Fanon, L’An V de la Révolution algérienne (1959) / Pour la révolution africaine (1964) Jean-Paul Sartre, Situations V : Colonialisme et néo-colonialisme (1964)

4. L’observation culturelle à Paris, capitale révolutionnaire

Mercier, Tableaux de Paris (1781-88) and Le Nouveau Paris (1799) Rétif de la Bretonne, Les Nuits de Paris ou le spectateur nocturne (1788-94) Arlette Farge, Vivre dans la rue à Paris au XVIIIe siècle (1992)

Colin Jones, Paris: Biography of a City (2004) Siofra Pierse, ed, The City in French Writing: The Eighteenth-Century Experience (2004) Daniel Roche, La Culture des apparences: une histoire du vêtement XVIIe-XVIIIe siècle (1989) Laurent Turcot, Le Promeneur à Paris au XVIIIe siècle (2007)

5. Révolutions poétiques et politique en France au tournant du 21ème siècle

Christophe Hanna, Poésie Action Directe (Al Dante, 2003) Collectif, Toi aussi, tu as des armes : Poésie & politique (La Fabrique, 2011) Nathalie Quintane, Tomates (Points, 2015) Christian Prigent, Salut les anciens, salut les modernes (POL, 2000)

Full Module Title: La Décolonisation française


Credits/Level: 15 Credits / Level 6


Lecturer(s): Dr Martin Shipway


None

Day/ Time: Thursday, 7.40-9.00pm; Term 1 only

Module Description:

We shall study France’s colonial empire from the 1930s to the moment of Algerian independence in 1962, examining the major episodes of French decolonisation in Indochina, sub-Saharan Africa and Algeria. The aims of the course are: to examine the processes

and impact of colonialism and decolonisation in the case of the French empire; and to explore the different approaches which may be adopted in studying France’s and her former colonies’ traumatic and in many ways still unfinished decolonisation.

Topics covered are likely to include the following:

French colonial rule and decolonisation, approaches & perspectives

Nationalist challenges to empire, 1930-1945

The French empire in the Second World War

Revolution and war in Indochina

Late colonial politics in French West & Equatorial Africa, 1944-56

Algeria: origins and development of war to 1958

Algeria from 1958: towards independence

Metropolitan perspectives and rationales of decolonisation

The module is taught primarily in French, but essays may be written in French or in English.

Syllabus:

A provisional syllabus is as follows:

5 Oct 2018 Introduction: imaginer la decolonisation ?

12 Oct 2018 La République devant le fait colonial

19 Oct 2018 Nationalismes et contestations anticoloniales

26 Oct 2018 Décolonisation et guerre froide en Indochine (et ailleurs)

2 Nov 2018 L’Union française et les limites de la réforme

9 Nov 2018 READING WEEK (pas de cours)

16 Nov 2018 « L’Algérie, c’est la France » : préludes à la guerre

23 Nov 2018 Faire la guerre en Algérie (et ailleurs)

30 Nov 2018 Débats autour de la torture

7 Dec 2018 De Gaulle, le FLN, et l’« invention » de la décolonisation

14 Dec 2018 Tourner la page? Vers une France post-coloniale

Assessment:


Essay 3,500 words 100%

Essential Texts:

Shipway, Martin. Decolonization and its Impact: A Comparative Approach to the End of the Colonial Empires (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008)

Thomas, Martin, Bob Moore & L.J. Butler. Crises of Empire: Decolonization and Europe’s Imperial States, 1918-1975 (London: Hodder 2008).

Full Module Title: Reading Text and Image in the Eighteenth-Century: Diderot and the Tableau

Module Code: AREL004H6

Credits/Level: 15 Credits / Level 6

Convenor: Dr Ann Lewis

Lecturer(s): Dr Ann Lewis


None

Day/Time: Thursday 7.40-9pm; Term 2 only

Module Description:

The power of the image is a central preoccupation in eighteenth-century philosophy. Not only is the relationship between word and image (and the respective limitations of the verbal and visual) a key topic in the aesthetic thought of the period, but the impact of images on human sensibility (as understood at the time) was also foregrounded in a range of epistemological, moral and medical debates. This course will focus on the writings of Denis Diderot, who explored the complexities of the relationship between word and image in a range of innovative ways. We will explore Diderot’s experimental theories of the tableau in conjunction with his attempts to put these into practice in various types of fictional, educational and artistic context (e.g. the theatre, the novel, and art criticism). This module will allow you to acquire in-depth understanding of the aesthetic thought of a single writer, and at the same time, to learn about the generic conventions of a range of different types of writing, as well as the way in which Diderot’s notion of the tableau suggests important innovations in each of these genres.

Syllabus:

Provisional outline week-by-week: Week 1: Introduction, the visual image and theories of language, close study of extracts provided in class Week 2: The tableau in the novel: the ‘Éloge de Richardson’ and La Religieuse Week 3: La Religieuse continued Week 4: The tableau in the theatre: Diderot’s Le Fils naturel and Entretiens sur ‘Le Fils naturel’ Week 5: Diderot and the theatre continued Week 6: Reading Week Week 7: Diderot and the visual arts: the Salon criticism Week 8: Diderot and the visual arts continued Week 9: Diderot and the visual arts continued Week 10: Conclusion / revision

Week 11: in-class test

Assessment Table:


Coursework essay 2500 words (in English or in French)

60%

In-class test under exam conditions

One and a half hours (answer may be in English or in French)

40%

Essential Texts:

Set texts:

Diderot, La Religieuse

Diderot, ‘Éloge de Richardson’

Diderot, Le fils naturel and ‘Entretiens sur Le fils naturel’

Diderot, Salon de 1765 and Salon de 1767 (specific reading will be indicated in due course)

Diderot’s Salon writings, plays and writings on the theatre are available in one volume, in the Laffont edition: Diderot Oeuvres: Tome IV: Esthétique-Théatre, ed. Laurent Versini (1996) which is recommended. But any Flammarion / Folio classiques edition would be fine.

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