21 - 30 of 88 results for: FRENCH

The French Revolution was not just a haunting memory in nineteenth-century France: it was the decisive structure around which French politics, but also French culture and the arts more generally, were centered. As some historians have argued, the French Revolution might not even have really "ended" until 1880. In this course, we will examine both literary representations of the French Revolution, as well as the literary analyses of a society constantly dealing with the fears (or hopes) of a new Revolution. Primary readings by Stendhal, Balzac, Flaubert, Zola. Taught in French.

Analysis of medieval love, satirical and Crusade lyrics of the trouabdours. Study of deictic address, corporeal subjectivity, the female voice, love debates, and the body as a figure of political conflict. Course readings include medieval treatises on lyric and modern translations of the troubadour tradition. Works by Ovid, Bernart de Ventadorn, Bertran de Born, La Comtessa de Dia, Thibaut de Champagne, Raimon Vidal, Dante, and Pound. Taught in English. Course includes a lab component for creation of multi-media translation projects: trobar. stanford.edu.

This course examines key intellectual, social and political developments in Europe during the twelfth century, and inquires after the afterlife of the "€œRenaissance"€ into the thirteenth century. Readings include works of literature (Chrétien de Troyes, lyric poetry of troubadours and Minnesinger, fables such as Roman de Renart), philosophy (Peter Abelard and scholasticism), and studies about the rise of the Gothic architectural style. The course takes up the Fourth Lateran Council and the history of the crusading movement in the first half of the thirteenth century. Taught in English.

A comprehensive introduction to and historical analysis of Emile Zola's literary work as foundational for the late-nineteenth century literary movement that we call "Naturalism." The analysis of Zola's novels will be embedded in the historical situation of France in the transition from the Second Empire to the Third Republic, with special emphasis on the epistemological situation of that time. Knowledge of French desirable but participation through English translations will be possible.

In this course we will read the main novels and plays of Pirandello, Sartre, and Beckett, with special emphasis on the existentialist themes of their work. Readings include The Late Mattia Pascal, Six Characters in Search of an Author, Henry IV; Nausea, No Exit, "Existentialism is a Humanism"; Molloy, Endgame, Krapp's Last Tape, Waiting for Godot. Taught in English.

If the Renaissance is famous for discovering unknown continents and ancient texts the body too was a new territory of conquest. How did literature respond to the rise of an anatomical gaze in the arts and in medicine and how did it stage 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 does it use it instead as a ubiquitous signifier for intellectual emotional and political ideas? The locus of desire, pleasure and disease, the body also functioned as a reminder of human mortality and was caught in the web of gender issues, religious controversies and new norms of behavior. Texts from prose fiction (Rabelais) poetry (Scève Ronsard Labé D'Aubigné) essays (Montaigne) and emblem literature. Extra documents include music scores tapestries paintings philosophical and anatomical plates from medical treatises. Taught in English. Visit the Web site: renaissancebodyproject.stanford.edu

This course will concentrate on the important role of science fiction and travel literature in early-modern France. Although these narratives were intended to describe distant worlds and different ways of living, they frequently revealed more about the aspirations, assumptions, hopes, and concerns of the cultures in which they originated than about their actual subject matter. Authors frequently sought to determine the identity and uniqueness of their own cultures by contrasting them against the 'otherness' of their imagined subjects. Similarly, by describing either utopian or dystopian civilizations, writers attempted to highlight the problems that plagued their own societies. Among other texts, we will read selections from Montaigne's 'Essais,' Cyrano de Bergerac's 'L'Autre monde ou les états et empires de la Lune,' Huygens's 'Nouveau traité de la pluralité des mondes,' Fontenelle's 'Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes,' Voltaire's 'Micromegas,' Bougainville's 'Voyage autor du monde,' and Diderot's 'Supplement au voyage de Bougainville.' Taught in English. Readings in French (English translations available).

In this course, taught in French, we will explore theater from different angles including literary theory (the different dramatic genres), aesthetics (the classical representation) and cultural theories (the social function of theatre under absolutism). A new approach to acting will be considered, i.e. the many connections between theatre and possession. Amongst the authors considered, we will include Rotrou, Corneille, Cyrano de Bergerac, Racine, Molière and Regnard. Taught in French.

A close reading of Giacomo Leopardi's Canti and Charles Baudelaire's Flowers of Evil and Paris Spleen in the context of 19th-century Europe. Discussion of the poetry will be enriched by selections from their essays on literature and art and by notes from the Zibaldone and Mon coeur mis à nu. Key themes and concepts include language, imagination, "noia," "spleen," and the oppositions between nature and civilization, modernity and antiquity. Taught in English.