Results for FRENGEN

Stanford Introductory Seminar. Preference to freshmen. Exploration of the quest in diverse genres: medieval romance (Chrétien de Troyes), Ovidian fables (Marie de France), allegorical dream quests (Roman de la Rose), and the novel (Cervantes¿ Don Quixote). How do stories of bodily transformation or animal fables challenge epic narratives of patriarchy or moral transcendence, and grand narratives of civilization? How does the art of courtly love and medieval allegory replace the mythology of classical epics? Focus on close analysis of primary texts with secondary research.

Paris as inspiration and refuge for American writers when it was the cultural capital of the world. Role of artistic movements (Cubism, Surrealism, Existentialism) and cultural institutions such as the cafés, librairies and salons in the life and creativity of the expatriate. Birth of their writing selves and existential questioning around issues of national and individual identities. A cross-cultural inquiry into Paris as a part of American culture, a myth, a longing, and source of inspiration. Readings: Gertrude Stein, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Anaïs Nin, Baldwin. In English.

Required gateway course for Philosophical and Literary Thought; crosslisted in departments sponsoring the Philosophy and Literature track: majors should register in their home department; non-majors may register in any sponsoring department. Introduction to major problems at the intersection of philosophy and literature. Issues may include authorship, selfhood, truth and fiction, the importance of literary form to philosophical works, and the ethical significance of literary works. Texts include philosophical analyses of literature, works of imaginative literature, and works of both philosophical and literary significance. Authors may include Plato, Montaigne, Nietzsche, Borges, Beckett, Barthes, Foucault, Nussbaum, Walton, Nehamas, Pavel, and Pippin.

Preference to sophomores. Political, social, and cultural events in Paris from the Napoleonic era and the Romantic revolution to the 30s. The arts and letters of bourgeois, popular, and avant garde cultures. Illustrated with slides.

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, Ronsard, Labé, Montaigne; medical texts and archival documents from http://renaissancebodyproject.stanford.edu.

A textual look at one of the figures that invented, embodied, and operated -- in their roles as intense agents of communication -- the European Enlightenment. Voltaire will be seen, above all, from the angle of his correspondence which, despite its seemingly personal nature, was mostly written for large groups or (often) paying readers looking for both instruction and entertainment.

Key lyrical works, prose poems, and theoretical essays by Charles Baudelaire and Stéphane Mallarmé. The rise of modernity and the birth of Modernism. Referential, non-referential, and anti-referential dimensions of the new lyric. Artifice and impersonality. Literary reflexivity and lucid illusion. The musical turn and the paradox of silence. The hundred-word sublime. The disenchantment and re-enchantment of the world.

René Girard's ouvre has been hailed as one of the most powerful and influential theories in the human sciences. This reading seminar will provide a critical introduction to Girard's theory, emphasizing its epistemological and philosophical underpinnings and its potential for interdisciplinarity. Its relevance for anthropology, economics, political and social philosophy, religious studies and literary theory will be fully explored.

To what extent is poetry the other of modern philosophy? How does modern aesthetic theory understand the distinction and blur the boundaries between philosophical and poetic thinking? Authors include Croce, Gentile, Sartre, Bataille, Agamben, Ricoeur, Cacciari, Derrida, and Vattimo.

Michel Foucault can be seen as a philosopher, an historian or a theoretician of literature. In this course, we will study Michel Foucault's work in the perspective of literary theory. Using some of his major works as well as his numerous articles (published in 4 volumes after his death), we will see him as a major 20th Century literary theoretician.

Based on student interest. Changes in research methods: the use of digitized texts, resources, and databases available through Stanford Libraries¿ gateways. Emphasis is on strategies for exploration of broad and specialized topics through new and traditional methods. Using a flexible schedule based on enrollment and the level of students¿ knowledge, may be offered in forms including a shortened version on the basics, independent study, or a syllabus split over two quarters. Unit levels adjusted accordingly.

This course will consider theoretical topics that arose in post-war continental philosophy (for example, Deleuze¿s ontology, Foucault¿s biopolitics, and Latour¿s collective of humans and non-humans) and which have served as a basis for recent attempts to reconcile the human and social sciences with the natural sciences around so-called ¿big picture questions¿ (ecological crisis, biotechnological progress) and around such bridging concepts as human and non-human agency, assemblage, emergence, force, habitus and mimicry. Focusing on case studies drawn from archaeology, anthropology, history, literature, film and bio-art, the course will try to indicate what sort of topics, research questions, approaches, theories and concepts might lead to an integration of these various kinds of knowledges.

Major texts of modern literary criticism in the context of professional scholarship today. Readings of critics such as Lukács, Auerbach, Frye, Ong, Benjamin, Adorno, Szondi, de Man, Abrams, Bourdieu, Vendler, and Said. Contemporary professional issues including scholarly associations, journals, national and comparative literatures, university structures, and career paths.

Discussion of one contemporary or historical text from the Western philosophical tradition per quarter in a group of faculty and graduate students. For admission of new participants, a conversation with H. U. Gumbrecht is required. May be repeated for credit.

Stanford Introductory Seminar. Preference to freshmen. Exploration of the quest in diverse genres: medieval romance (Chrétien de Troyes), Ovidian fables (Marie de France), allegorical dream quests (Roman de la Rose), and the novel (Cervantes¿ Don Quixote). How do stories of bodily transformation or animal fables challenge epic narratives of patriarchy or moral transcendence, and grand narratives of civilization? How does the art of courtly love and medieval allegory replace the mythology of classical epics? Focus on close analysis of primary texts with secondary research.

What truths are in dreams? How does the quest for a symbolic object embody a moral struggle? What motivates a personal search for divine love? Study of arguably the most influential work of the European Middle Ages, the Roman de la Rose of Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun. Focus on the work as erotic, allegorical quest for the mystical Rose, and scholastic encyclopedia through close analysis, secondary readings, and study of manuscript illumination. Use of medieval and modern French edition.

The myth of the feminine idol in French films in historical and cultural context. The mythology of stars as the imaginary vehicle that helped France to change from traditional society to modern nation after 1945. Filmmakers include Renoir, Truffaut, and Nelly Kaplan. The evolution of the role of women in France over 60 years. Lectures in English; films in French with English subtitles. This course must be taken for either 3 units or 5 units; cannot be taken for 4 units.

Comparative readings of the two poets in their respective national contexts, with attention to biographical and poetological frameworks. Canonic status and scholarly reception histories. Renewed interest in their work with regard to their distinctive practices of connecting prosodic form and extra textual referents. Prerequisite: reading knowledge of German or French.

The predominantly female mystical experience or direct-embodied encounter with a spiritual reality that is difficult, perhaps impossible, to reduce to words, or to explain rationally. Sources include European texts from the Middle Ages to the present by women and men who attempt to convey the experience metaphorically, to interpret it theologically and philosophically, and to transmit it actively to others.

What truths are in dreams? How does the quest for a symbolic object embody a moral struggle? What motivates a personal search for divine love? Study of arguably the most influential work of the European Middle Ages, the Roman de la Rose of Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun. Focus on the work as erotic, allegorical quest for the mystical Rose, and scholastic encyclopedia through close analysis, secondary readings, and study of manuscript illumination. Use of medieval and modern French edition.

How does women's writing evolve from the very early 20th century, when women's liberation movements first began and WW I brought major social changes, to the flowering of feminine writing in the 70s and beyond? What is the relationship between women writers and filmmakers, and feminism? Is it legitimate to consider women writers in a separate category? To what extent does a reevaluation of women writers mean reconsidering modern literary history? Authors and filmmakers include Aleramo, Yourcenar, de Beauvoir, Banti, Duras, Cavani.