11 - 20 of 88 results for: FRENCH

The literature, culture, and politics of France from Louis XIV to Olympe de Gouges. How this period produced the political and philosophical foundations of modernity. Readings include Corneille, Molière, Racine, Lafayette, Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau, Beaumarchais, and Gouges. Taught in French. Prerequisite: FRENLANG 124 or consent of instructor.

This course will explore several of the most important texts of 19th- and 20th-century French literature. The aim of the course will be understanding stylistic and thematic experimentation in its historical/cultural context, with a focus on the theme of transgression : moral, political, and social. We will read works in all major literary genres (poetry, prose, and drama) and will discuss prominent movements such as Realism, Romanticism, Symbolism, Decadentism, and Existentialism through the works that best define them. Readings include Constant, Balzac, Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Rimbaud, Flaubert, Maupassant, Jarry, Gide, Apollinaire, Breton, Yourcenar, Sartre. All readings, discussion, and assignments are in French.

This course aims to equip students with an understanding of the cultural, political and literary aspects at play in the literatures of Francophone Africa and the Caribbean. Our primary readings will be Francophone novels and poetry, though we will also read some theoretical texts, as well as excerpts of Francophone theater. The assigned readings will expose students to literature from diverse French-speaking regions of the African/Caribbean world. This course will also serve as a "literary toolbox," with the intention of facilitating an understanding of literary forms, terms and practices. Students can expect to work on their production of written and spoken French (in addition to reading comprehension) both in and outside of class. Required readings include: Aimé Césaire, "Cahier d'un retour au pays natal," Albert Memmi, "La Statue de Sel," Kaouther Adimi, "L'envers des autres", Maryse Condé, "La Vie sans fards". Movies include "Goodbye Morocco", "Aya de Yopougon", "Rome plutôt sue Vous". Taught in French. Prerequisite: FRENLANG 124 or consent of instructor.

This course explores the central place Africa holds in prose writing emerging during periods of globalization across the Atlantic, including the middle passage, colonialism, black internationalism, decolonization, immigration and diasporic return. We will begin with Equiano's Interesting Narrative (1789), a touchstone for the Atlantic prose tradition, and study how writers crossing the Atlantic have continued to depict Africa in later centuries: to dramatize scenes of departure and arrival in stories of new citizenship, to evoke histories of racial unity and examine social fragmentation, to imagine new national communities or question their norms and borders. Our readings will be selected from English, French, Portuguese and Spanish-language traditions. And we will pay close attention to genres of prose fiction (Adichie, Condé, Olinto), prose poetry (Césaire, Neto, Walcott), theoretical reflection (Fanon, Glissant), reportage (Gide, Gourevitch), ethnography (Leiris, Ouologuem) and autobiography (Barack Obama).

Through an analysis of medieval love, satirical and Crusade lyrics in the Old Occitan, Old French, and Galician-Portuguese traditions, we will study deictic address, corporeal subjectivity, the female voice, love debates, and the body as a figure of political conflict. Special attention will be given to the transmission of vernacular song from live performance to manuscripts. Authors include Ovid, Bernart de Ventadorn, Bertran de Born, La Comtessa de Dia, Thibaut de Champagne, Dante, and Pound. Taught in English.

Focus on the French New Wave's cinematic revolution of 1959-1962. In a few years, the Nouvelle Vague delivered landmark works such as Truffaut€'s 400 Blows, Godard's Breathless, Chabro'€™s Le Beau Serge or Resnais' Hiroshima mon amour, and changed forever the way we make and think about movies. Why did these films look so radically fresh? What do they say about France's youth culture in the early 60s? How is the author's theory behind them still influencing us today? Focus is on cultural history, aesthetic analysis, interpretation of narrative, sound and visual forms.

Issues of freedom, morality, faith, knowledge, personal identity, and the value of truth explored through film; philosophical investigation of the filmic medium itself. Screenings to include Twelve Monkeys (Gilliam), Ordet (Dreyer), The Dark Knight (Nolan), Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Allen), and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Kaufman). Taught in English.

How has Western culture constructed the world's oceans since the beginning of global ocean exploration? How have imaginative visions of the ocean been shaped by marine science, technology, exploration, commerce and leisure? Authors read might include Cook, Equiano, and Steinbeck; Defoe, Verne, Stevenson, Conrad, Woolf and Hemingway; Coleridge, Baudelaire, Moore, Bishop and Walcott. Films by Painlevé and Bigelow. Seminar co-ordinated with a spring 2015 Cantor Arts Center public exhibition. Visits to Cantor; other possible field trips include Hopkins Marine Station and SF Maritime Historical Park.

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. Taught in English.