Department of French
Autumn 2015 – Year Three and Year Four
Submission Date: Monday 10thth August
Please place TWO COPIES of your essay in the Essay Submission Box located
on the first floor of the O’Rahilly Building opposite Room 1.24.
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FR4201 Literary Seminar
N.B. ANSWER ONE QUESTION IF YOU FAILED OR DID NOT SUBMIT ONE
PIECE OF WORK DURING THE YEAR. ANSWER TWO QUESTIONS IF YOU
FAILED OR DID NOT SUBMIT TWO PIECES OF WORK DURING THE YEAR.
FR4201 – Literary Seminar II Autumn Essay questions Your essay should be between 1500 and 2000 words in length. Two copies should be submitted, one with an attached and completed cover sheet. Semester 2: 1. How is desire represented in EITHER or BOTH of the two texts studied this semester? 2. Discuss the theme of monstrosity in Racine’s Phèdre. 3. Discuss the relationship between Jacques Hold, the narrator, and Lol V. Stein in Marguerite Duras’s Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein. Of these two characters, whose subjectivity is the focus of the text? Dr. Maria O’Sullivan [email protected] FR4201 Literary Seminar Autumn 2015 essay titles Dr. Patrick Crowley 1. ‘To find a form that accommodates the mess, that is the task of the artist now.’ Critically assess this statement in relation to extracts from at least two of the texts that you have studied in this course. Your answer should involve a close, analytical reading of your chosen texts. 2. ‘To tell the truths of life we require the artifice of fiction.’ Critically assess this statement in relation to extracts from at least two of the texts that you have studied in this course. Your answer should involve a close, analytical reading of your chosen texts. 3. ‘Writing, like art, explores the frame that separates it from life.’ Critically assess this statement in relation to extracts from at least two of the texts that you have studied in this course. Your answer should involve a close, analytical reading of your chosen texts. 4. ‘C’était une archéologie du présent, pour ainsi dire, une tentative de reconstituer l’essence de quelque chose à partir des fragments les plus nus’. Critically assess this statement in relation to extracts from at least two of the texts that you have studied in this course. Your answer should involve a close, analytical reading of your chosen texts. 5. ‘Artists/writers seek to save something of a life from the oblivion of death.’ Critically assess this statement in relation to extracts from at least two of the texts that you have studied in this course. Your answer should involve a close, analytical reading of your chosen texts. Argument and content Formulate a problématique, a critical question, create a certain distance between you and the text and argue your case. In arguing your case you need to look to the text, to the detail of the text rather than to speculation. Your argument, then, needs to work closely with, and be based on, the content of the texts you studied for this course. Structure Your essay should begin with an introduction that signposts the approach you intend to adopt. The body of your exam essay should follow from the introduction. It should not be composed of a scattered collection of points. Points need to be integrated into your analysis of the question. The conclusion should return to the opening remarks and offer either to draw your points into a new understanding of the question or to offer a provisional conclusion that opens the way to further exploration. Expression Expression has to do with style. This is elusive and comes with reading. What can be improved is spelling, syntax and a wide range of vocabulary that captures what you want to say. Bibliography A bibliography is not always essential particularly if you respond well to texts and if you’re good at close, detailed readings. However, research can offer us new insights, can offer arguments that we disagree with and can, as a result, add grist to the mill. Do not become too dependent on your secondary sources and do not make them argue your case. Always acknowledge your sources whether books or websites. Your essay, of 1,500 words, will be assessed according to the cogency of its argument, the precision and relevance of its treatment of its sources, and the clarity of its writing. Please submit two copies of your essay. FR4403 Acquisition of French as a Second Language
Dr. Martin Howard
Write an essay of 1,500-2,000 words on the following topic:
Choose an area of Second Language Acquisition research discussed during the course, and
present a critique of the insights that SLA research provides on that topic.
FR4409 Translation Project Milouda Louh The assessment for this module will be a translation project: • You need to select a chapter of a modern novel (preferably) or a short story in English or French and find its published translation in the other language. Make sure the original text is NOT a translation. • You need to write a short introduction presenting the author and the book or collection of stories you have selected. (section1) • You need to justify your choice of text and comment briefly on the selected text as a whole (themes, plot, characters, tone and originality etc). • Section 3 will be the main part of the project will consist of a commentary on the transformations and strategies used by the translator to solve various problems: you need to find up to 20 points to comment on. So your original text should be between 3 and 6 pages in length. You needn’t comment on every single transformation but you should select and analyze the most interesting ones; you’ll also have to justify those transformations in the context of the different tendencies of the French and English languages. (This will have been discussed earlier in class) It is not sufficient to make a list of transformations; they have to be analyzed. • In your conclusion your can discuss of the translator’s strategy in the context of theoretical issues presented in the initial classes (see documents on Blackboard). • The terminology to be used will be explained in class Vinay et Dalbernet, Stylistique comparée du français et de l’anglais FR4702: Contemporary French society and politics Dr. Patrick Crowley. Autumn assessment: 2014–15 Essay topics Write an essay on one of the following topics: 1. Is laïcité an impediment to integration? Your answer should draw upon primary sources (such as the Stasi report) as well as secondary sources. 2. ‘The laïcité that is meant to be reinforced by the 2004 law has always been marked by a tension between individual rights and statist unity’ (Joppke 2009: 34). Critically discuss this statement. Your answer should draw upon primary sources (such as the Stasi report) as well as secondary sources. 3. How is participation in university education used as the basis of a sociological analysis by Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-­‐Claude Passeron, and by Michel de Certeau? Answer with reference to the texts by these authors studied in class. 4. How important do you consider cultural capital to be in the attainment of social status? Answer with reference to two or more of the texts studied in class. 5. According to Shirato and Webb (2003: 9), ‘most analysts accept the importance of the technological, economic, cultural and political changes associated with the term “globalization”, but very few agree as to what these changes mean or if, taken together, they add up to something that “really exists” for everyone’. With reference to at least three of the texts studied in class, critically discuss the idea that globalization exists for everyone. 6. With reference to at least three of the texts studied in class, critically discuss the idea that the term ‘globalization’ is really shorthand for ‘neocolonialism’. Submission Your essay should be 2000 words in length (please include a word-­‐count). You are required to submit two copies of your essay (one of which may be a photocopy) on the day for the submission of Autumn essays. Your argument The purpose of the essay is to give you the opportunity to demonstrate your understanding of the materials on which we have been working and to develop an argument of your own on the basis of your close reading of the text or texts under discussion. Precision, relevance, reasoned thinking, and clear writing are signs of a successful essay. A good way to think about how to write a critical essay is to read critical essays and to think about how they’re written so do draw upon secondary sources.