FREN601: History of the French Language
Professor Scullen
This course examines how French came to be French starting with some basic notions of Latin and working our way up to the French of the present day. Course objectives include: (1) An introduction to diachronic linguistics through the study of the development of the French language (2) An appreciation for several texts produced throughout the history of the French language (3) A deeper knowledge of the French language and its mystères. The course will be taught in French, although many of the readings will be in English.
FREN603: Advanced Translation
Professor Clough
This course uses a presentation, discussion, and workshop format to explore the complexities of translation as an exercise of interpretation and linguistic transformation.
Under the banner of the study of context, which for us means the multiple strands of influence in play at any moment of decision-making, we will examine types of translational decisions [the “comparative stylistics” of Vinay and Darbelnet and others] and work on specific problems. We will practice conservative translating while pushing the limits of our thinking about language and meaning. By the end of the course, students will have gained skill in interpreting the kind of written text they have chosen as their term project, discovered their optimal translational working style, mastered techniques and tricks of the trade, begun a foray into comparative linguistics, and produced a publishable-quality translation.
FREN611: The Structure of the French Language
Professor Scullen
This course examines the structure of the French language by looking closely at the various linguistic sub-systems: phonology/phonetics, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics while taking into account sociolinguistic considerations and a historical perspective. Participation and attendance are extremely important in this class. The course will be taught in French although many readings will be in English. No prior knowledge of linguistics is assumed, although any background in linguistics will be helpful. Course objectives include: (1) an introduction to general linguistics and methods of analysis, (2) an introduction to the specialized field of French linguistics, (3) a deeper knowledge of the French language.
FREN639A: Seventeenth Century French Literature: Baroque Mannersim Literature
Professor Campangne
Borrowed from the realm of art history, the terms “baroque” and “mannerism” have often been used to describe texts written during the period that extends between 1560 and 1685. These works, which may be theatre plays, novels or essays, escape simple definitions and categories. They also have the distinction of being reflexive texts that provide theoretical views on writing and literature. Taking the historical context of the “baroque” era into consideration, as well as the numerous ties that link literature and the visual arts in this period, our discussion will include La Fontaine’s Les amours de Psyché, Corneille’s Illusion comique , Rosset’s Histoires tragiques and Rotrou’s Veritable St Genest.
FREN649A Special Topic in Eighteenth Century French Literature: The Novel
Professor Benharrech
This graduate seminar will examine how Marivaux, Montesquieu, Crébillon fils, Mme de Graffigny, Mme Riccoboni, Rousseau, Voltaire, Diderot, and Olympe de Gouges broke away from literary conventions inherited from the classical period. We will study in the light of concurrent philosophical inquiries how these authors renewed well-established genres of fiction: memoirs, epistolary novels, travel accounts, tales, etc. We will consider different forms of narratives (structural, thematic, and generic conventions), while paying special attention to the gradual development of realism in representations of human nature and, in particular, the rise of the modern notion of self in these fictional experiments. Secondary readings will include eighteenth-century theoretical works (Diderot, Marmontel, Mercier) as well as contemporary criticism (Élias, Watt, Bénichou, Foucault, Bourdieu, Irigaray, etc.). Classes conducted in French.
FREN649A Special Topic in Eighteenth Century French Literature: Theater in the Age of Enlightenment
Professor Benharrech
The objective in this course is dual: examining the renewal of dramatic forms and themes through textual analysis as well as considering the functions of theater in Eighteenth-century France social, political, and intellectual conflicts. Our goal will be to study how dramaturgy can be a tool of exploration and inquiry in moral philosophy (Lesage, Marivaux, Destouches, Graffigny). We will see how theater, a collective and cultural practice, staged the feuds between the philosophes and their opponents (Voltaire, Rousseau, Palissot). Finally this course will examine Diderot’s theoretical reflections on the “serious genre” and Beaumarchais’s attempts to invent new dramatic forms eschewing the very idea of theatricality. Classes conducted in French.
FREN699F: Francophone Studies: Madness in Francophone Literature by Women Writers of Africa and the Caribbean
Professor Orlando
This course concentrates on the literature of Africa and the Caribbean written by women of French expression. The theme of madness is a central one in the novels read during the semester and will provide the theoretical and literary basis of our discussions. We will concentrate particularly on how women writing from Algeria, Cameroon, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Haiti and Senegal use the madness of their heroines as a metaphor to allude to socio-cultural and political injustices they or their people have experienced. These authors demonstrate that women in these countries and regions have been historically oppressed by the socio-cultural structures before, during and after colonialism. Works by authors such as Maryse Condé, Marie-Vieux Chauvet, Ken Bugul, Malika Mokeddem, Myriam-Warner Vieyra, among others, draw readers’ attention to the plight of women as their lives are influenced by civil war, religious fundamentalism, poverty and the patriarchal political structures that have refused them a voice in the conceptualization of their own destinies.
FREN699F : Francophone Studies : Théories, Philosophies et Textes Révolutionnaires du Monde Francophone
Professor Orlando
This course focuses on the literature of Africa and the Caribbean written in French by the “revolutionaries” of the 20th and 21st century. The theme of revolution is a primordial one and at the heart of the great works of Francophone literary movements such as Negritude which fueled the fires of anti-colonial politics. We will concentrate on theoretical manifestos written by Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire, Léopold S. Senghor, Albert Memmi, Paulette and Jane Nardal, among many others writing from the African diaspora. The past revolutions are still present in contemporary struggles as exemplified in contemporary Francophone authors’ works such as those of Patrick Chamoiseau, Malika Mokeddem, Maryse Condé, and Rachid O. These authors challenge postcolonial governments, write against civil war and religious fundamentalism, and seek to found a littérature-monde that will promote global humanism.
French 699G: French Popular Culture: Colonial and Postcolonial Representations
Professor Eades
This graduate seminar examines the representation and meaning of colonial and post-colonial discourses in French popular culture. We will study various theoretical texts (Bhabha, Ferro, Greene, McClintock, Nora, Norindr, Ricoeur, Said, Schalk etc.) that help us understand how popular works on the French colonial Empire enable particular ideas about class, gender, race, identity, and nation. We will apply these “readings” to various forms of popular culture such as literature (Alleg, Camus, Céline, Cendrars, Duras, Genêt, Koltès, Loti, Simenon), graphic arts (Barye, Delacroix, Fromentin, Gérôme, Depardon), comic books (Hergé, Ferrandez, Franc, Giroud et Lax), and film, (SIRPA documentaries, French fiction film before and after 1962 including Duvivier, Feyder, Godard, Resnais, Denis, Annaud, Arcady, Cabrera, Denis), with a particular emphasis on the latter.
FREN699I Forgetting differences in 16th- and 17th-century France
Professor Frisch
Examines some of the cultural resonances of forgetting in16th- and 17th- centry French Literature in the wake of the Wars of Religion. The 1598 Edict of Nantes commands the subjects of Henri IV to efface all memories of the “troubles” that plagued France throughout the second part of the sixteenth century. Our investigation of this remarkable gesture will be informed by a range of theoretical texts, both ancient and modern, that deal with oblivion as an ethical, political, social, psychological, historical and philosophical phenomenon. Our primary aim will be to understand how such manifestations of forgetting inflect and are in turn informed by works of canonical poetic literature (Du Bellay, Ronsard, Montaigne, Garnier, Aubigné, Corneille, Descartes, Lafayette). What role did the experience of civil war – and the effort to forget the differences that contributed to it – play in the transition from the Renaissance to the “époque classique”?
FREN699I Discourses of French Identity in Early Modern France
Professor Frisch
Explores the ways in which French identity is represented in France in the wake of the religious wars and at the dawn of the French colonial enterprise. A primary focus will be the ways in which attitudes toward religious difference inflect French colonial policy in the period – and how they continue to play a role in conceptions of what it means to be “French” today. Readings drawn from the poetry of the Pléiade, from religious polemic in both verse and prose, and from missionary writings. We will be doing research in both the Rare Book Room at Hornbake Library (on campus) and at the Library of Congress.
FREN 699I Travel in the Renaissance
Professor Frisch
Offers a survey of French travel literature, both fictional and proto-historical, in the age of “les grandes découvertes.” Rabelais, Du Bellay, Montaigne, Thevet and Léry will be read both for the perspective they provide on the notion of the “Renaissance” and as a way into some of the basic texts of literary theory (e.g. Bakhtin, Barthes, Certeau, Derrida).
French 699P: 19th Century French Poetry
Professor Brami
This seminar introduces the concepts and practices of 19th century French poetry through a study of major as well as lesser-known poets, examining its philosophical underpinnings and its aesthetic innovations and limits. The following questions will anchor our work: How did “Romantic poetry” emerge from “Classical poetry”? How and why was Romantic poetry called into question by Romantic, and later by “symbolist,” poets? What does it mean to read 19th century poetry today after the poetic transformations of the 20th century?