FRENCH CONTENT MODULES 2016-17
The culture modules available this year (and listed below) are:
-
-
Understanding Culture: Languages and Texts (Level 4) (30 credits)
Reading Transnational Cultures (Level 5) (30 credits)
Representations of Love, Desire and Sexuality (Levels 5 & 6) (30 credits)
Level 4 Content Modules
Full Module Title:
Imagining France: An Introduction to French Studies
Module Code:
LNLN022S4
Credits/Level:
30/4
Convenor:
Dr Akane Kawakami
Lecturer(s):
Dr Ann Lewis, Dr Akane Kawakami, Dr Jean Braybrook, Dr Damian
Catani
Entrance
Requirements:
No language other than English is required
Day/Time/Term:
Monday 7.40-9.00 pm, Terms 1 & 2
Module
Description:
This module aims to introduce students to key artefacts (literary,
historical and philosophical) from French and francophone culture
from the sixteenth to twentieth centuries. We shall consider why
these artefacts may be considered important for an understanding of
what may be meant or imagined by the notion of ‘Frenchness’ past
and present. Moving across centuries and disciplines, all the material
we cover is linked by its preoccupation with France’s various
definitions in opposition to notions of ‘foreignness’. The module will
also incorporate a number of study skills sessions (on essay-writing,
commentary, bibliography and referencing).
Syllabus:
The module is taught and assessed entirely in English. Titles which
appear in French in the following outline will be studied in English
translation, although you are encouraged to make use of the original
French texts too if you are able. You are expected, except where
indicated below, to purchase the texts which are specified as primary
texts, and you are expected also to have read these primary texts in
advance of the relevant section of the module. All the primary texts
will be available in the Library, and some secondary texts (those you
are not expected to purchase) will also be available in the Library
Reading Room Collection and also for electronic access via Moodle.
You are not expected to purchase any of the secondary texts, which
are merely suggestions for background reading.
Section 1: Term 1, Weeks 1-5: ‘Otherness’: Imagining the
Outsider’s View in Eighteenth-Century France (Ann Lewis)
Eighteenth-century French writers frequently use the fictional
perspective of a foreign or exotic observer to explore, defamiliarize
and satirize aspects of their own culture. In this part of the course, we
will focus on several key texts from this period (by some of the most
celebrated writers of the Enlightenment), to examine this very
particular mode of exploring ‘Frenchness’.
Primary Texts:
Voltaire, ‘L’Ingénu’ (1767), in Romans et contes (GF, GarnierFlammarion)
– English translation : ‘The Ingenu’ in Candide and Other Stories, tr.
Roger Pearson (Oxford World Classics, 2006)
Graffigny, Lettres d’une Péruvienne (1747, rev. ed. 1752), any
unabridged modern edition is fine
– English translation: Letters of a Peruvian Woman, tr. Jonathan
Mallinson (Oxford World Classics)
Suggested Secondary Reading:
John S. Clouston, Voltaire’s Binary Masterpiece: ‘L’Ingénu’
Reconsidered (Peter Lang, 1986)
Roger Pearson, The Fables of Reason: A Study of Voltaire’s ‘Contes
philosophiques’ (Clarendon Press, 1993), relevant sections
Robin Howells, Playing Simplicity: Polemical Stupidity in the Writing
of the French Enlightenment (Peter Lang, 2002), relevant sections
Janet Gurkin Altman, ‘A Woman’s Place in the Enlightenment Sun:
The Case of F. de Graffigny’, Romance Quarterly, 38 (1991), 261-72
Julia Douthwaite, ‘Relocating the Exotic Other in Graffigny’s Lettres
d’une Péruvienne’, Romanic Review, 82 (1991), 456-74
Downing Thomas, ‘Economy and Identity in Graffigny’s Lettres d’une
Péruvienne’, South Central Review, 10:4 (1993), 55-72
Section 2: Term 1, Weeks 7-11: Places: Paris or the Provinces?
(Akane Kawakami)
Paris and its artefacts (the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe) are
frequently used as a symbol of France, and the country often seems
to be more obviously centralised than, for instance, the UK. Yet the
culture of the provinces, both the smaller towns and the countryside,
are also inextricably linked to a perceived French identity. In this
section we will examine texts describing different kinds of French
places, and explore the implications of these depictions for various
notions of ‘Frenchness’. All texts are available in English translation.
Primary texts:
Guy de Maupassant, Contes du jour et de la nuit (1884), édition de
Pierre Reboul (Gallimard : coll. Folio classique)
-– English translation: A Parisian Affair and Other Stories (Penguin
Classics)
Alphonse Daudet, Lettres de mon moulin (1869)
–- English translation: Letters from my Windmill (Penguin Classics,
2007)
Suggested secondary reading:
Robert Alter, Imagined Cities: Urban experience and the Language of
the Novel (2005)
Christopher Prendergast, Paris in the Nineteenth Century (1992)
John West-Sooby, ed., Images of the City in Nineteenth-Century
France (1998)
Section 3: Term 2, Weeks 1-5: Renaissance Self-Fashioning
(Jean Braybrook)
In this section of the module we shall look at some poetry, Joachim
Du Bellay’s Regrets, a collection of sonnets published in 1558. The
poet describes himself as a sort of exile in Rome and expresses
nostalgia for France. The end of the sonnet cycle, however, shows
disillusion creeping in once he returns to his home country. We shall
see how the poet creates a picture of the poet-narrator and of his
native land.
We shall also look at Michel de Montaigne’s chapter from volume 2
of his Essais, ‘De l’exercitation’, ‘On Practice’ (chapter 6). This is
written against the background of the French Wars of Religion and
shows Montaigne developing his views on death. The Essais are
available online, in French and in English, although some of the
translations are poor.
We shall ask ourselves what study of the past, in this case the French
Renaissance or sixteenth century, can contribute to understanding of
the present. The French admire their literary figures and often quote
or draw from Du Bellay and Montaigne.
Recommended reading
A bilingual handout of a few of the sonnets in the Regrets will be
provided for use in class.
There is a good translation by Richard Helgerson: ‘The Regrets’, ‘The
Antiquities of Rome’ […] (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006);
but it is expensive. I have used it for my handout.
Kathleen M. Hall and Margaret B. Wells, Du Bellay: Poems (Grant &
Cutler, Critical Guides to French Texts, 1985)
There are several good translations of Montaigne’s Essais. The most
readily available is that by Michael A. Screech, Michel de Montaigne:
The Complete Essays (Penguin Classics, various editions).
Remember we are concentrating on Volume 2, chapter 6.
Terence Cave, How to Read Montaigne (London, Granta, 2007).
Short, difficult at times, but very rewarding.
Sarah Bakewell, How to Live: or a Life of Montaigne in One Question
and Twenty Attempts at an Answer (Chatto & Windus, 2010; Other
Press, 2011)
Section 4, Term 2, Weeks 7-11: Conflict and the Fracturing of
National Identity (Damian Catani)
These sessions examine the notion of a fractured French identity, or
France divided against itself, which questions and subverts its core
Republican belief in a nationally cohesive, unifying ideology. A
selective exploration of cultural history and novels relating to two key
socio-political conflicts brings this fractured sense of national identity
into sharp relief: the first is the Paris Commune of 1871, a breakaway
and self-governing working-class faction that emerged from the ashes
of the Franco-Prussian War only to be brutally crushed by the new
Republican government; the second is the First World War (1914-18),
a conflict of unprecedented barbarity that led an entire generation of
young Frenchmen to become profoundly disillusioned with the
traditional patriotic virtues of military heroism and glory.
Primary texts (selected chapters):
Emile Zola: La Débâcle (1892), (translated as The Downfall)
Louis-Ferdinand Céline: Voyage au bout de la nuit (1932),
(translated as Journey to the End of the Night)
John M. Merriman: Massacre: The Life and Death of the Paris
Commune (Yale University Press, 2014)
Vincent Sherry (ed.): The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of
the First World War (Cambridge University Press, 2005)
Assessment Table:
One commentary in English (500-1000 words, 10% of overall mark)
due by Reading Week of Term One.
Two essays in English (1500-2000 words each, 35% each), one due
at the start of Term 2, the other due at the start of Term 3.
One unseen in-class test (one and a half hours) in English or French
(20%) to be answered in class (date tbc).
Essential Texts:
The essay questions will be available via Moodle several weeks in
advance of the deadline. The essays must also be submitted via
Moodle, and before the deadline, which will be clearly stated when
the questions are announced.
Please see ‘Syllabus’ for details of the set texts for each part of the
module.
Full Module Title
Understanding Culture: Languages and Texts
Module Code
LNLN021S4
Credits/Level
Convenor:
Lecturer(s):
Entrance
Requirements:
Day/Time/Term:
30 credits, Level 4
Joanne Leal
Joanne Leal, Luciana Martins, Luis Trindade
No language requirement other than English
Module
Description:
This module will provide you with an introduction to what it means to
study languages and cultures. We will explore the interdisciplinary
and cross-cultural nature of language and cultural study by focusing
on different kinds of text – literary, filmic, historical, visual – from a
variety of different cultural contexts: French-, German-, Portuguese
and Spanish-speaking. You will learn about the practical and
theoretical tools you need to engage with these texts and the cultural
contexts which produced them and to work with these tools in your
own writing.
Term
Topic
Tutor
One
07.10.16 Introduction to Studying
LT
Languages and Cultures
Primary reading: William H. Sewell,
“The Concept(s) of Culture”, in
Beyond the Cultural Turn, 1999
Secondary reading: Clifford Geertz,
“Thick description: toward an
interpretive theory of culture” and
“Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese
Cockfight", in The Interpretation of
Cultures, 1973
14.10.16 Order of Discourse
LT
Primary reading: Michel Foucault,
“Las Meninas”, in The Order of
Things, 1970
Secondary reading: Hayden White,
“The Value of Narrativity in the
Representation of Reality”, in The
Content of the Form, 1987
21.10.16 Microhistory
LT
Primary reading: Robert Darnton,
“Workers Revolt: The Great Cat
Massacre of the Rue Saint-Sevérin”,
in The Great Car Massacre and
Other Episodes in French Cultural
History, 1984
Secondary reading: Carlo Ginzburg,
“Clues: routes of an evidential
paradigm”, in Clues, Myths and the
Syllabus:
Fridays, 6.00-7.20, Term 1 & 2
28.10.16
04.11.16
11.11.16
18.11.16
25.11.16
02.12.16
09.12.16
16.12.16
Term
Two
13.01.16
20.01.16
27.01.16
03.02.16
10.02.16
17.02.16
Historical Method, 1989
Cultural History and Sociology of
Culture
Primary reading: Roger Chartier and
Pierre Bourdieu, The Sociologist and
the Historian, 2015
Secondary reading: Roger Chartier,
“Intellectual History and History of
Mentalities: a dual re-evaluation”, in
Cultural History: between practices
and representations, 1988
Culture and Marxism
Primary reading: E.P. Thompson,
“Time, Work-Discipline and Industrial
Capitalism”, in Past and Present 38,
1967
Secondary reading: Raymond
Williams, “Marxism and Culture”, in
Culture and Society, 1780-1950,
1983
Reading Week
Languages, Cultures and
Literature
Reading Kafka (Die Verwandlung /
Metamorphosis)
Please read the story before class:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/5200
/5200-h/5200-h.htm
Reading Kafka (Die Verwandlung /
Metamorphosis)
Reading Kafka (Das Urteil /The
Judgement)
Please read the story before class:
http://www.franzkafkastories.com/sh
ortStories.php?story_id
=kafka_the_judgement
Reading Kafka (Das Urteil /The
Judgement)
Languages, Cultures and Film
Watching Fassbinder (Angst essen
Seele auf / Fear Eats the Soul)
Please watch this film in advance of
the class: it is available on DVD.
Watching Fassbinder (Angst essen
Seele auf / Fear Eats the Soul)
Watching Almodóvar (Todo sobre
mi madre / All about my mother)
Please watch this film in advance of
the class: it is available on DVD
Watching Almodóvar (Todo sobre
mi madre / All about my mother)
Reading Week
LT
LT
JL
JL
JL
JL
JL
JL
JL
JL
JL
JL
Visual cultures: understanding
LM
‘the visual’
Gillian Rose, ‘Researching with
visual materials: a brief survey’
03.03.16 Visual cultures: a critical
LM
approach
Gillian Rose, ‘Towards a critical
visual methodology’
10.03.16 Self-fashioning images: Andean
LM
photographs
James Scorer, ‘Andean selffashioning: Martín Chambi,
photography and the ruins at Machu
Picchu’
17.03.16 In and out of focus: imagined
LM
modernities in Brazil
Beatriz Jaguaribe and Maurício
Lissovsky, ‘The visible and the
invisibles: photography and social
imaginaries in Brazil’
24.03.16 Questioning photojournalism:
LM
Sebastião Salgado’s Latin
American visions
John Mraz, ‘Sebastião Salgado:
ways of seeing Latin America’
1. A 500 word assessment task to be submitted by Friday
November 11 2016. This is worth 20% of the mark for the
module.
2. A 500 word assessment task to be submitted by Friday 13
January 2017. This is worth 20% of the mark for the module.
3. A 1,500 word essay to be submitted on Friday 21 April 2017.
This is worth 30% of the mark for the module.
4. A 1,500 word essay to be submitted on Friday 19 May 2017.
This is worth 30% of the mark for the module.
William H. Sewell, “The Concept(s) of Culture”, in Beyond the
Cultural Turn, 1999
Michel Foucault, “Las Meninas”, in The Order of Things, 1970
Robert Darnton, “Workers Revolt: The Great Car Massacre of the
Rue Saint-Sevérin”, in The Great Car Massacre and Other Episodes
in French Cultural History, 1984
Roger Chartier and Pierre Bourdieu, The Sociologist and the
Historian, 2015
E.P. Thompson, “Time, Work-Discipline and Industrial Capitalism”, in
Past and Present 38, 1967
Franz Kafka, Die Verwandlung / Metamorphosis
Franz Kafka, Das Urteil / The Judgement
Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Angst essen Seele auf / Fear Eats the
Soul
Pedro Almodóvar, Todo sobre mi madre / All About my Mother
Gillian Rose, Visual Methodologies : An Introduction to Researching
with Visual Materials, 3rd edition (London : Sage, 2013), Chapters 1
and 2
James Scorer, ‘Andean self-fashioning: Martín Chambi, photography
and the ruins at Machu Picchu’, History of Photography 38: 4 (2014),
24.02.16
Assessment:
Essential Texts:
379-397
Beatriz Jaguaribe and Maurício Lissovsky, ‘The visible and the
invisibles: photography and social imaginaries in Brazil’, Public
Culture 21: 1 (2009), 175-209
John Mraz, ‘Sebastião Salgado: ways of seeing Latin America’, Third
Text 16:1 (2002), 15-30
Level 5 Content Modules
Full Module Title
Reading the Signs: Text and Image in French Culture
Module Code
AREL106S5
Credits/Level
Convenor/
Lecturers
30/5
Convenor: Dr Ann Lewis ([email protected])
Lecturer(s): Dr Ann Lewis, Dr Damian Catani, Dr Akane Kawakami
Entrance
Requirements
Day
none
Time
6.00-7.20pm, Terms 1 & 2
Module
Description
This team-taught module will focus on an increasingly important area
of research in French studies: visual culture, and more specifically,
the relationship between word and image. The module will introduce
a range of frameworks for exploring and analysing this relationship,
in different historical, philosophical, literary and artistic contexts, from
the eighteenth to twentieth centuries.
Thursday
Following an introductory session, the module will be divided into
three major sections. Each will explore interactions between verbal
and visual media differently. First, by considering illustration and its
relation to the project of representing knowledge in the major
Enlightenment project, the Encyclopédie. Secondly, in an exploration
of the interaction between the visual and verbal in twentieth-century
literature (including poems by Guillaume Apollinaire and a novel by
the Surrealist writer André Breton). Lastly, by analysing the
relationship between text and photographic images within the genre
of life writing.
Syllabus
Provisional syllabus (to be taught over Terms 1 and 2):
7 sessions: Introduction, and Diderot’s Encyclopédie and its
Plates: Embodying Knowledge (AL)
The Encyclopédie ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et
des metiers, edited by Diderot and d’Alembert (published between
1751-72), was a daring and ambitious publishing venture, and a
major project of the French Enlightenment. In addition to 17 volumes
of articles, there were 11 volumes of plates, which have attracted
considerable interest on the part of historians and literary critics.
This section of the module will examine the significance of the
illustrations, their captions, and their relation to the text of the
Encyclopédie, focusing on a selection of specific articles and images.
6 sessions: Negotiating Urban Modernity: Text and Image
Redefined (DC)
This section examines how text-image relations were redefined as
part of a deliberate strategy to negotiate and combat the alienating
effects of early twentieth-century urban modernity. First, we will
explore the forefather of Surrealism Guillaume Apollinaire’s ‘concrete
poems’ Calligrammes, in which he offers us innovative pictorial
representations of words as suggestive, multi-layered responses to
an increasingly disconcerting urban space. Secondly, we will
examine Nadja, the novel by leading Surrealist writer and theorist
André Breton, which brings into productive dialogue text and
photographs set in modern Paris as a dual prism through which to
capture and understand the psychological alienation experienced by
its central protagonist.
7 sessions: Photo-biography? Textual and Photographic
Images of the Self (AK)
This section will examine the relationships that can hold between text
and photographic image in the genre of self-writing. Are
photography and writing rivals in this field, or do they complement
each other? We will be examining a variety of writers and
photographers, such as Proust, Roland Barthes, Hervé Guibert, and
Annie Ernaux.
Assessment Table
Essential Texts
Assignment
Essay 1
Essay 2
In-class test
Description
2000 words
2000 words
1, 5 hours
Weighting
30%
30%
40%
A course pack and further details of primary reading will be
provided at the start of the course.
Sample secondary reading







Davis, Whitney, A General Theory of Visual Culture (2011)
Mitchell, W. J. T. Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual
Representation (1994)
Mitchell, Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology (1986)
Wall, Anthony, Words and Images: A French Rendezvous (2010)
Werner, Stephen, Blueprint: A Study of Diderot and the
Encylopédie Plates (1993)
Brewer and Hayes, eds, Using the Encyclopédie, Ways of
Knowing, Ways of Reading, SVEC 2002:05
Barthes, Roland, Mythologies (1957)
Full Module Title:
Dreaming the Self: From the Enlightenment to Romanticism
Module Code:
TBC
Credits/Level:
15/5
Convenor:
Dr Ann Lewis
Lecturer(s):
Dr Ann Lewis, Dr Damian Catani
Entrance
Requirements:
n/a
Day/Time:
Tuesday 7.40-9.00 pm Term 3 only
Module
Description:
In this module we will examine how the psychological category of
the dream is used to explore notions of the self in literary and
philosophical writing from the French Enlightenment to the
Romantic period. The first section of the module brings together
two towering figures of the French eighteenth-century: Diderot (Le
Rêve de d’Alembert, 1769) and Rousseau (Rêveries d’un
promeneur solitaire, 1776-78). These texts deploy innovative and
experimental literary forms – structured around the notion of the
dream or ‘rêverie’ – in order to question what constitutes selfhood
or identity (for example, the relation of the individual self to its own
past and present, to the ‘Other’ of society, and the relation between
‘thought’, body and soul.) By using fragmentary forms, each text
explores, and questions, the idea of a ‘unified self’.
In the second part of the module we will look at Romantic, as
opposed to Enlightenment, conceptions of the dream. As key
writers of the Romantic movement, Gautier and Nerval rehabilitate
dream as a neglected dimension of human experience that serves
two important functions: first, to counterbalance a perceived
Enlightenment overemphasis on the conscious, rational Self, and
secondly, to free modern man from the shackles of a utilitarian,
mercantile society. Thus, by offering us a tantalising glimpse into a
liberating dream world of exotic, supernatural fantasy and
heightened aesthetic experience, Gautier’s Le Pied de Momie
(1840) provides a necessary antidote to a superficial industrial
modernity, while in Aurélia (1855) Nerval seeks to counter the
stigmatising rationalism of doctors who pathologise his dreams as a
sign of insanity by defending these dreams as a rich storehouse of
self-knowledge and a stimulus to imaginative artistic creation. Both
these writers, therefore, endeavour to revalorise those ‘irrational’,
visionary aspects of dreams that had largely been ignored in the
previous era.
This module will be taught and assessed in English. Titles which
appear in French in the following outline will be studied in French.
Students with no French may follow by means of an English
translation.
Syllabus:
Set texts:

Denis Diderot, Le Rêve de d’Alembert (ed. by Colas Duflo, GF
Flammarion, 2002) [Eng. translation: Rameau’s Nephew and
Diderot’s Dream, Penguin Classics, tr. by Leonard Tancock,
reprint 2004]

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire
(ed. by E. Leborgne, GF-Flammarion, 2006) [Eng. translation:
Reveries of the Solitary Walker, Penguin Classics, tr. by Peter
France, reprint 2004]

Théophile Gautier: Le Pied de momie (Eng. translation: The
Mummy’s foot]. Primary text provided.

Gérard de Nerval: Aurelia [Eng. translation by Sieburth].
Primary text provided.
Provisional outline:
Week 1: Introduction
Week 2: Diderot, Le Rêve de d’Alembert [D’Alembert’s Dream]
Week 3: Diderot, Le Rêve de d’Alembert [D’Alembert’s Dream]
Week 4: Rousseau, Rêveries d’un promeneur solitaire [The
Reveries of a Solitary Walker]
Week 5: Rousseau, Rêveries d’un promeneur solitaire [The
Reveries of a Solitary Walker]
Reading Week
Week 7: Gautier, Le Pied de momie [The Mummy’s foot]
Week 8: Gautier, Le Pied de momie [The Mummy’s foot]
Week 9: Nerval, Aurélia
Week 10: Nerval, Aurélia, Conclusion, Revision
Week 11: in-class test
Sample Reading List
General:
Charles Taylor, The Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern
Identity (1989)
Jerrold Seigel, The Idea of the Self: Thought and Experience in
Western Europe since the Seventeenth Century (2005)
Diderot:
Wilda Anderson, Diderot’s Dream (1990), Chapter 2, pp.42-76
----- ‘Diderot’s Laboratory of Sensibility’, Yale French Studies, 67
(1984), 72-91
Carol Sherman, Diderot and the Art of Dialogue (1976), Chapter 3
Peter France, Diderot (Past Masters, OUP, 1983)
Rousseau:
David Williams, Rousseau: ‘Les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire’
(Grant & Cutler, 1984)
Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Sources of the Self, ed. by
Timothy O’Hagan (Ashgate, 1997) – series of articles
Jean Starobinski, Jean-Jacques Rousseau: La Transparence et
l’obstacle (1971), ‘Rêverie et transmutation’ [also in translation:
Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Transparency and Obstruction, tr. by
Arthur Goldhammer (1988)]
Robert Wokler, Rousseau: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2001)
Gautier:
Paul Bénichou: L’école du désenchantement: Sainte-Beuve,
Nodier, Musset, Nerval, Gautier (Paris Gallimard, 1992) [also
includes chapter on Nerval]
Pierre-Georges Castex: Le Conte fantastique en France de Nodier
à Maupassant (Paris, Jose Corti, 1951)
Richard Hobbs (ed.): From Balzac to Zola: Selected Short Stories
(Bristol Classic Press, 1992)
Valerie Shaw: The Short Story: A Critical Introduction (London:
Longman, 1983)
Nerval:
William Beauchamp: The Style of Nerval’s ‘Aurélia’ (The Hague:
Mouton, 1976)
Frederic Burwick: Poetic Madness and the Romantic Imagination
(Penn State, 1996) [excellent chapter on Nerval]
Norma Rinsler: Gérard de Nerval (London: Athlone Press, 1973)
Richard Sieburth: Nerval, Selected Writings (Penguin Classics:
1999) [includes English translation of Aurélia]
Assessment Table:
One essay (written in English or in French) of 2000 words [worth
60% of the overall mark]
One unseen in-class test (one and a half hours) in English or
French [worth 40% of the overall mark] to be answered in class
(date tbc).
Essential Texts:
Please see ‘Syllabus’ for details of the set texts.
Full Module Title:
Contemporary French Literature
Module Code:
TBC
Credits / Level:
15 credits, Level 5
Convenor:
Dr Nathalie Wourm
Lecturer(s):
Dr Akane Kawakami, Dr Nathalie Wourm
Entrance
requirements:
Day / Time /Term:
None
Module
Description:
What is happening in French literature right now? Who
are the most interesting and innovative writers of novels,
short stories and poetry in twenty-first century France?
We will be looking at the works of some of the most
striking contemporary literary figures and discuss them in
their cultural and theoretical contexts, as well as through
the lens of literary history. You will be able to make
comparisons with current literary developments in other
languages, and you will gain an insight into what is
happening today in literary culture in France.
Tuesday 7.40-9pm, Term 2
The course is taught and assessed in English. Books will
be studied in both their French and English versions so
that students with no French can take the module.
Syllabus:
Provisional outline:
Term 2:
Week 1: Introduction to the contemporary Francophone
novel, and Jean-Philippe Toussaint
Week 2: Marie Darieussecq
Week 3: Marie Darieussecq
Week 4: Patrick Modiano
Week 5: Patrick Modiano
Week 6: Reading Week
Week 7: Introduction to current poetic practice in France
Week 8: Olivier Cadiot
Week 9: Anne Portugal
Week 10: Pierre Alferi
Week 11: Other developments
Assessment:
Assignment
Essay
Description
2500 words
Weighting
100%
One essay (2500 words, 100% of final assessment)
Essays can be written in either English or French.
Essential Texts:
Primary texts
Jean-Philippe Toussaint, La salle de bain (1985), tr. The
Bathroom (Dalkey Archive Press, 2008)
Marie Darrieussecq, Truismes (1996), tr. Pig Tales. A
Novel of Lust and Transformation (The New Press, 1997);
Naissance des fantomes (1998), tr. My Phantom
Husband (Faber and Faber, 2001)
Patrick Modiano, Le cafe de la jeunesse perdue (2007),
tr. In the Café of Lost Youth (MacLehose Press, 2016);
Pour que tu ne te perdes pas dans le quartier (2014), tr.
So You Don’t Get Lost in the Neighborhood (Mariner
books, 2016)
In the event that some of the following works are no
longer available or out of stock, extracts will be provided
by the lecturer.
Olivier Cadiot, Le Colonel des Zouaves (1997), tr.
Colonel Zoo (2006)
Pierre Alferi, Sentimentale Journée (1997), tr. Night and
Day (2013)
Anne Portugal, Définitif Bob (2002), tr. Absolute Bob
(2010)
Suggested secondary reading:
Contemporary novel section:
Helena Chadderton and Gill Rye (eds.), Marie
Darrieussecq (2012)
Sarah L. Glasco, Parody and Palimpsest: Intertextuality,
Language and the Ludic in the Novels of Jean-Philippe
Toussaint (2015)
Akane Kawakami, Patrick Modiano (2015)
Colette Sarrey-Strack, Fictions contemporaines au
féminin: Marie Darrieusecq, Marie Ndiaye, Marie Nimier,
Marie Redonnet (2002)
William VanderWolk, Paradigms of Memory: the
Occupation and other Hi/stories in the novels of Patrick
Modiano (1998)
[More titles will be suggested during the course of the
module.]
Contemporary poetry section:
JÉRÔME GAME, ed. Porous Boundaries: Texts and
Images in Twentieth-Century French Culture. Oxford:
Peter Lang, 2007.
MICHAEL BROPHY et MARY GALLAGHER, eds. Sens
et présence du sujet poétique: La poésie de la France et
du monde francophone depuis 1980. Brill, 2006.
MICHAEL SHERINGHAM. Everyday Life: Theories and
Practices from Surrealism to the Present, Oxford
University Press, 2006, 440 pp. Paperback June 2009.
French Translation, Traversées du quotidien- des
surréalistes aux postmodernes, tr. Maryline Heck and
Jeanne-Marie Hostiou, Presses Universitaires de France,
collection ‘Lignes d’Art’, 416pp, 2013.
GAME, JÉRÔME. Poetic Becomings Studies in
Contemporary French Literature . Peter Lang, 2011.
RUFFEL, DAVID. “Une Littérature
Contextuelle”. Littérature 160 (2010): 61–73.
BAETENS, JAN, and DOUGLAS BASFORD. “Pierre
Alferi's "allofiction": A Poetics of the Controlled
Skid”.SubStance 39.3 (2010): 66–77.
MICHAEL SHERINGHAM. ‘Survivance et recrudescence
de l’avant-garde, ou l’influence de Pierre Alferi sur André
Breton’ in Wolfgang Asholt (ed.), Avantgarde und
Modernismus : Dezentrierung, Subversion und
Transformation im Literarisch-Küntstlerischen, Berlin /
Boston, de Gruyter, 2014, pp. 89-105.
MICHAEL SHERINGHAM. ‘Pierre Alferi and the Poetics
of the Dissolve: Film and Visual Media in Sentimentale
Journée’, in Naomi Segal and Gill Rye (eds), ‘When
Familiar Meanings Dissolve ...’ Essays in French Studies
in Memory of Malcolm Bowie, Oxford, Bern… Peter Lang,
p. 37-53.
GAME, JÉRÔME. “In & Out, Ou Comment Sortir Du Livre
Pour Mieux Y Retourner — "et
Réciproquement"”. Littérature 160 (2010): 44–53.
DISSON, AGNÈS, and ROXANNE LAPIDUS. “Pierre
Alferi: Compressing and Disconnecting”. SubStance 39.3
(2010): 78–90.
PINSON, JEAN-CLAUDE. “Poésie Pour « Un Peuple Qui
Manque »”. Littérature 110 (1998): 22–37.
NATHALIE WOURM. "Anticapitalism and the Poetic
Function of Language." L'Esprit Créateur 49.2 (2009):
119-131.
NATHALIE WOURM. 'On Just the Other Side of Intimacy:
Pierre Alferi's La Protection des Animaux',Nottingham
French Studies, 2011, 50:3, 128-138.
NATHALIE WOURM. 'Non-Readings, Misreadings,
Unreadings: Deleuze and Cadiot on Robinson Crusoe
and Capitalism', French Literature Series, 2010, XXXVII,
177-190.
NB:
The following module (RTC) runs at Level 5 ONLY and is usually
available for students in their first year of study
Full Module Title
Reading Transnational Cultures
Module Code
ARCL022S5
Credits/Level
Convenor:
Lecturer(s):
Entrance
Requirements:
Day/Time:
30 credits, Level 5
Joanne Leal
Joanne Leal, Ann Lewis, Damian Catani, tbc
No language requirement other than English
Module
Description:
This module is designed to help you explore the ways in which
culture relates to the ideas of the nation and the transnational by
encouraging you to work with cultural artefacts which engage with
more than one cultural context. We will ask questions like: how
important/restricting it is to explore culture within a national context;
what does a text need to do to be described as transnational; can
our understanding of these categories be transformed by our
engagement with literary and filmic texts; what are some of the
multiple ways in which a text can engage with more than one culture;
are these always liberating and transformative or can they also be
oppressive and reactionary; how important is language to these
questions; do texts have to be monolingual or does transnationality
require an engagement with more than one language? We will work
together as experts in different cultural contexts to explore these
ideas in relation to specific texts.
Mondays, 6.00-9.00, Term 3 only
Syllabus:
Term
Three
24.04.17
01.05.17
08.05.17
15.05.17
22.05.17
29.05.17
Topic
Tutor
Introduction
Bank Holiday
France and Americanization: Jean-Luc
Godard, Breathless (1960)
Available on DVD: please watch before the
class.
Germany and Americanization: Wim
Wenders, The American Friend (1977)
Available on DVD: please watch before the
class.
Enlightenment perspectives (i) France and
England
Set text: Voltaire, Lettres philosophiques
(1734) [Letters concerning the English
Nation]
Bank holiday
JL
JL
JL
AL
05.06.17
Assessment:
Enlightenment perspectives (ii) Persia and
AL
France
Set text: Montesquieu, Lettres persanes
(1721 rev. ed. 1754) [Persian Letters]
12.06.17
French versus American Democracy (i):
DC
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in
America (1840) – extracts (available on
Moodle)
19.06.17
French versus American Democracy (ii):
DC
Bernard-Henri Levy, American Vertigo:
Travelling America in the Footsteps of
Tocqueville (2007) – extracts (available on
Moodle)
26.06.17
Colonialisms: Gilberto Freyre, The
tbc
Portuguese and the Tropics (1961) and
Peter Weiss, Song of the Lusitanian Bogey
(1969) – extracts (available on Moodle)
03.07.17
Emigrations: João Canijo, Ganhar a Vida
tbc
(2001) and Ruben Alves, The Gilded Cage
(2013) Available on DVD: please watch
before the class.
1 x 1000 word assessment task to be submitted by Monday 29 May
2017. This is worth 25% of the mark for the module.
1 x 1000 word assessment task to be submitted by Monday 19 June
2017. This is worth 25% of the mark for the module.
1 x 2500 word essay to be submitted by Monday 24 July 2017. This
is worth 50% of the mark for the module.
75% attendance requirement, worth 0% of the mark for the module.
This element must be passed.
Essential Texts:
Jean-Luc Godard, À bout de souffle / Breathless (available on DVD)
Wim Wenders, Der amerikanische Freund / The American Friend
(available on DVD)
Kristin Ross, Fast Cars, Clean Bodies (MIT Press, 1996)
Voltaire, Lettres philosophiques ou lettres anglaises (Flammarion,
1994 – or any complete edition)
[Letters concerning the English Nation, Oxford World Classics,
translated by Nicholas Cronk, 2009]
Montesquieu, Lettres persanes (Folio classique or Flammarion
editions – or any other complete edition)
[Persian Letters, Oxford World Classics, translated by Margaret
Mauldon, 2008]
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1840)
Bernard-Henri Levy, American Vertigo: Travelling America in the
Footsteps of Tocqueville (2007)
Gilberto Freyre, The Portuguese and the Tropics (extracts will be
available on Moodle)
Peter Weiss, Song of the Lusitanian Bogey (extracts will be available
on Moodle)
João Canijo, Ganhar a Vida (available on DVD)
Ruben Alves, The Gilded Cage (available on DVD)
Almeida, Miguel Vale de. “Tristes Luso-Tropiques: the roots and
ramifications of Luso-Tropicalist discourses”, in An earth-colored
sea: “race”, culture and the politics of identity in the post-colonial
Portuguese-speaking world (New York: Berghahn, 2004)
Pereira, Victor. “The Papers of State Power. The Passport and the
Control of Mobility”, in Luís Trindade (ed.), The Making of Modern
Portugal (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013)
Full Module Title
Representations of Love, Desire and Sexuality
Module Code
Credits/Level
Convenor:
Lecturer(s):
LNLN024S5 / AREL095S6
30 credits, Level 5 or Level 6
Joanne Leal
Joanne Leal, Nicolette David, Jean Braybrook, Luciana Martins,
John Walker, Damian Catani, Akane Kawakami
No language requirement other than English
Entrance
Requirements:
Day/Time:
Module
Mondays, 6.00-7.20, Terms 1 and 2
This course aims to explore various ways in which love, desire and
Description:
Syllabus:
sexuality have been represented and performed at different times, in
different cultural contexts and within different cultural media. It will
enable students to understand the reasons for these differences in
cultural production by providing them with information about the
socio-historical contexts in which the texts were produced and the
social and cultural norms to which they were responding and
reacting. Students will also be enabled to understand some of the
key concepts from psychoanalytic, gender, post-colonial and political
theory which relate to these issues and they will be encouraged to
make these critical perspectives productive for their own interpretive
practice.
Tutor
Term
Topic
One
03.10.16 Introduction
JL
10.10.16 Love, desire and sexuality in fin-de-siècle
ND
Vienna
Arthur Schnitzler, Fräulein Else (1924) and
Freud’s Das Unbehagen in der Kultur /
Civilization and its Discontents (1930).
Extracts of Freud’s text will be provided.
17.10.16 Love, desire and sexuality in fin-de-siècle
ND
Vienna
Arthur Schnitzler, Fräulein Else (1924) and
Freud’s Das Unbehagen in der Kultur /
Civilization and its Discontents (1930).
Extracts of Freud’s text will be provided.
24.10.16 Fire and Incest in Racine’s Phèdre (1677)
JB
This session will examine how Racine revives
dead metaphors in order to depict the force
that drives Phèdre to her doom. It will
consider the role of the gods in creating an
incestuous passion in Phèdre. It will look at
the notion of guilt.
31.11.16 Temptations of Adultery in Madame de
JB
Lafayette’s La Princesse de Clèves (1678).
We shall look at the role of the mother and of
the Prince de Clèves, at the depiction of
Nemours, and at the oscillation experienced
by the Princess between contact with others
and withdrawal, life at Court and in the
countryside. Repos, or peace of mind,
repeatedly eludes her.
07.11.16 Reading Week
14.11.16 Interpolated Tales as Vicarious
JB
Experience in La Princesse de Clèves.
The positive and negative poles of love are
explored in tales concerning other characters,
fictional or historical. The girl who had relied
on her mother for education in the dangers of
passion has her eyes opened at Court to the
force of, for instance, infidelity and jealousy.
21.11.16 Subverting colonial discourse: a black
LM
femme fatale
Xica da Silva (Carlos Diegues, 1976)
28.11.16
15.12.16
12.12.16
Term
Two
09.01.16
16.01.16
23.01.16
30.02.16
06.02.16
13.02.16
20.02.16
27.02.16
06.03.16
13.03.16
20.03.16
Assessment:
Antônio Márcio da Silva, ‘The Black Femme
Fatale in Xica da Silva’
Subverting colonial discourse: a black
femme fatale
Xica da Silva (Carlos Diegues, 1976)
Sites of desire: tourism and eroticism in
Bahia
Erica Lorraine Williams, ‘Geographies of
Blackness: Tourism and the Erotics of Black
Culture in Salvador’
Sites of ‘excessive femininity’: Carnival in
Rio de Janeiro
Clare Lewis, ‘Woman, Body, Space: Rio
Carnival and the Politics of Performance’
Love and Desire in Realism and Poetic
Realism
George Eliot, Janet’s Repentance (1857), in
Scenes from Clerical Life, Penguin Classics,
1998, pp.197-350 and Thomas Mann, Tonio
Kröger (1912)
Love and Desire in Realism and Poetic
Realism
George Eliot, Janet’s Repentance (1857) and
Thomas Mann, Tonio Kröger (1912)
Desire and Transgression in 19th century
France
Charles Baudelaire, The Flowers of Evil
(1857) I
Desire and Transgression in 19th century
France
Charles Baudelaire, The Flowers of Evil
(1857) II
Cross-Cultural Desire or Adolescent
Sexuality?
Marguerite Duras, The Lover (L’amant)
Reading Week
Cross-Cultural Desire or Adolescent
Sexuality?
Marguerite Duras, The Lover (L’amant)
Cross-Cultural Desire or Adolescent
Sexuality?
Marguerite Duras, The Lover (L’amant)
Exploring masculinity and male sexuality
in the 1950s
Max Frisch, Homo Faber, 1957
Exploring masculinity and male sexuality
in the 1950s
Max Frisch, Homo Faber, 1957
Conclusion
LM
LM
LM
JW
JW
DC
DC
AK
AK
AK
JL
JL
JL
Level 5: two essays of 2500 words each from a list of topics. Essay
one should relate to material taught in the first term; essay two
should relate to material taught in term two.
Level 6: one essay of 2500 words from a list of topics and one
independently researched essay of 4500 words, topic to be agreed
with relevant tutor. Essay one should relate to material taught in the
first term; essay two can relate to material taught in either term or
both and should focus on two or more of the texts studied.
Essential Texts:
The deadline for essay one is: Monday 16 January 2017
The deadline for essay two is: Monday 24 April 2017
Arthur Schnitzler, Fräulein Else
Sigmund Freud Das Unbehagen in der Kultur / Civilization and its
Discontents
Racine, Phèdre
Madame de Lafayette’s La Princesse de Clèves
Xica da Silva (Carlos Diegues, 1976)
Antônio Márcio da Silva, ‘The Black Femme Fatale in Xica da Silva’
Erica Lorraine Williams, ‘Geographies of Blackness: Tourism and the
Erotics of Black Culture in Salvador’
Clare Lewis, ‘Woman, Body, Space: Rio Carnival and the Politics of
Performance’
George Eliot, Janet’s Repentance, in Scenes from Clerical Life
Thomas Mann, Tonio Kröger
Charles Baudelaire, The Flowers of Evil
Marguerite Duras, The Lover (L’amant)
Max Frisch, Homo Faber
Level 6 Content Modules
Full Module Title:
Mémoire en français
Module Code:
Credits/Level:
Convenor:
LNLN004S6
30 Credits / Level 6
Dr Jean Braybrook
Lecturer(s):
Dr Damian Catani (workshops) and supervisors (appointed by the
module convenor)
Entrance
Requirements:
Day/ Time:
French 5 is highly desirable.
Term:
Module
Description:
Tuesday 7:40-9:00 p.m. Five workshops only, in alternate weeks in
Term 1 (weeks 2, 4, 7, 9, 11) in addition to individual supervision at
other times, by arrangement.
Term 1 only
Le mémoire is a critical study of a problem or phenomenon (cultural,
artistic, literary, historical, political…) in the French or francophone
sphere. It cannot be simply descriptive or derivative.
Students should submit their topic for approval to the module
convenor or to a lecturer in the June preceding the start of their
module. Information about lecturers’ interests may be found on the
Departmental website.
Students will need to conduct research over the summer
vacation.
Five workshops, attendance of which is compulsory, will be
conducted in French and will aim to: (1) improve the student’s written
and oral linguistic skills, (2) present research techniques, (3) set out
the conventions for presentation of research at university, (4) provide
mock vivas.
Assessment:
Two copies of the Mémoire (7500 words, excluding footnotes,
bibliography and any appendices), typed and comb-bound, have to
be handed in. The student keeps a third copy, with the same page
numbering, and brings it to the viva or oral exam. The work must
usually be given to the administrators by the end of the first week of
Term 3. The viva or oral generally takes place in the second half of
May, with two internal examiners and one external. The external or
visiting examiner is there to examine the Birkbeck tutors rather than
the student.
Marks for the written Mémoire (70% of the total assessment) are
given on the basis of the originality of the subject, the clarity with
which issues are set out, the quality of the French and the standard of
presentation of the whole, including the critical apparatus. A pass
mark must be obtained on the Mémoire in order for a student to
pass the module as a whole.
The viva (30% of the total assessment) takes place in French and
lasts approximately twenty minutes. It gives students the opportunity
to present their research, explain how they have organized their work,
and defend the positions they have adopted.
Essential Texts:
IMPORTANT NOTE: Except in special circumstances, students
who fail to contact either a potential supervisor or the Module
Convenor (Dr Jean Braybrook) before the end of the Summer
Term may be excluded from this module.
Dictionnaire Le Petit Robert
Le Robert : Dictionnaire des synonymes et nuances
Full Module Title:
Translation from and into French
Module Code:
Credits/Level:
Convenor:
Lecturer(s):
Entrance
Requirements:
Day/ Time:
LNLN005S6
30/6
Jean Braybrook
Jean Braybrook, Akane Kawakami
It is advisable to have French 5.
Module
Description:
Tuesdays, 6.00-7.20 p.m.
Term 1 & 2 (20 sessions)
In this module we aim to study the theory and practice of translation
from and into French, with an emphasis on practical tasks. Both
literary and non-literary texts will be studied. Some poetry may be
included.
Assignments are given most weeks of the course.
One longer translation (about 1000 words) together with brief
footnotes and a commentary (covering for instance features difficult
to translate) is to be submitted at the end of Term 2.
Syllabus:
S. Hervey and I. Higgins, Thinking Translation (Routledge, 2002)
Assessment:
A three-hour examination represents 60% of the total assessment. It
comprises two passages for translation, one English into French, the
other French into English. Students are allowed to take a monolingual
(French/French or English/English) Petit Robert-type dictionary into
the examination.
Coursework represents the remaining 40% of the assessment.
Coursework consists of a Long Translation and commentary (1000
words and 800 words), worth 25%, and In-class assessment (SIX
200-word translations) worth 15%.
Essential Texts:
You may find it helpful and amusing to read:
David Bellos, Is That a Fish in Your Ear? (Penguin, 2011).
Full Module Title:
Module Code:
Credits/Level:
Convenor:
Lecturer(s):
Entrance
Requirements:
Day/Time:
Racine
AREL091H6
15/6
Jean Braybrook
Jean Braybrook
Open enrolment; Students should be taking French 4, or above
Module
Description:
Monday, 7.40-9pm
Term 1 only (10 sessions)
Jean Racine is a seventeenth-century playwright whose five-act
tragedies, in alexandrines, are renowned for the beauty of their
language and form. He affords the audience or reader insights into
the human condition and into emotions such as jealousy. He shows
men and women in the grip of passions they cannot control or bowing
down to horrific circumstances. Even as they are destroyed, the
characters prove capable of lucidity.
Teaching is in French; assignments may be completed in French or
English.
Syllabus:
Texts to be read will be selected from the following:
Andromaque; Britannicus; Bérénice; Bajazet; Phèdre; Athalie.
These are all available in paperback; make sure you buy editions
with line numbering.
Assessment:
One in-class exercise (40% of the total assessment); one 2500-word
essay (60% of the total assessment).
Roland Barthes, Sur Racine (Paris, Seuil, 1979)
Georges Forestier, Jean Racine (Paris, Gallimard, 2006)
Odette de Mourgues, Racine, or The Triumph of Relevance
(Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1967)
Essential
Secondary
Reading:
Full Module Title:
Module Code:
Credits/Level:
Convenor:
Lecturer(s):
Entrance
Requirements:
Day/Time:
Module
Description:
Sensibility and Sociability in the Eighteenth-Century French
Novel
AREL003H6
15/6
Dr Ann Lewis
Dr Ann Lewis
French 3
Thursday, 7.40-9.00 P.M.
Term 1 only (10 sessions)
This module will introduce students to four key novels from
eighteenth-century France. ‘Sensibility’ and sympathy are central
notions in Enlightenment thought and inseparable from contemporary
theories on social relations and sociability. How important are
emotions such as pity in moral conduct? Is an ‘une âme sensible’ a
universal disposition, or the exclusive quality of a happy (or unhappy)
few? What is the place of family feeling and/or sexual passion in
moral behaviour and in the pursuit of happiness? These are some of
the moral and philosophical questions that are explored in the set
texts which we will examine over the course of this module.
You should be able to read the set texts in French.
Syllabus:
Week 1 Introduction
Weeks 2-3: Prévost, Manon Lescaut (1731)
Weeks 4-5: Marivaux, La Vie de Marianne (1731-42)
Week 6: Reading Week
Week 7-8: Diderot, La Religieuse (1797)
Week 9-10: Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Paul et Virginie (1788)
Week 11: In-class commentary
Sample secondary reading (one or two chapters in each):
 Henri Coulet, Le Roman jusqu’à la Révolution (1967)
 John Cruikshank, ed., French Literature and its Background 3:
The Eighteenth Century (1968)
 Ann Lewis, Sensibility, Reading and Illustration: Spectacles
and Signs in Graffigny, Marivaux and Rousseau (2009)
 David Marshall, The Surprising Effects of Sympathy:
Marivaux, Diderot, Rousseau and Mary Shelley (1988)
 Anne Vila, Enlightenment and Pathology: Sensibility in the
Literature and Medicine of Eighteenth-Century France (1998)
Assessment:
Essential Texts:

One essay (2,500 words) worth 60% of the overall mark for
the module
 One exercise under exam conditions (1.5 hours) (essay or
commentary) worth 40%
Prévost, Manon Lescaut (1731)
Marivaux, La Vie de Marianne (1731-42)
Diderot, La Religieuse (1797)
Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Paul et Virginie (1788)
Any modern edition in French is fine: the best are Folio classique or
Flammarion.
Full Module Title
The French Novel of Disillusionment
Module Code
Credits/Level
Convenor/Lecturer
AREL049H6
15 / 6
Damian Catani
Entrance
Requirements
Day
Time
n/a
Module
Description
This module aims to examine the notion of disillusionment as figured
by three representative novelists from three different centuries in the
post-Enlightenment era: Musset, Céline and Houellebecq. Analysis of
the novels will be clustered around different articulations of
disillusionment (‘mal de siecle’, ‘ennui’, ‘nihilism’) and will also be
contextualised, where appropriate, by historical causes of this
disillusionment: post-Napoleonic defeatism (Musset); post-war
trauma and economic Depression (Céline); the alienation of late
twentieth-century bourgeois technocratic society (Houellebecq).
Thursday
7.40-9pm, Term 2 only
The course will be taught primarily in French and the primary texts
will be studied in French.
Assessment Table
Essential Texts
Assignment
Essay
In class-test
Primary texts :
Description
2,500 words
commentary
Weighting
60%
40%
Musset: Les Confessions d’un enfant du siècle (1836)
Céline: Voyage au bout de la nuit (1932)
Houellebecq: Les particules élémentaires (1998)
A full list of suggested secondary reading will be distributed at
the start of the course
Full Module Title:
Who am I really? Life-Writing in the 20th and 21st centuries
Module Code:
AREL093H6
Credits/Level:
Convenor:
Lecturer(s):
Entrance
Requirements:
Day/Time:
15/6
Dr Akane Kawakami
Dr Akane Kawakami
French 3
Module
Description:
‘Life-writing’ has recently attempted to replace ‘autobiographical
writing’ as the label of a genre which has fascinated and infuriated
many, owing to its ambivalent relationship with the real, the
philosophical issues it raises with regard to selfhood and identity, and
the problematisation of such issues by being put into the context of
self-reflexive writing. This module will attempt to explore these issues
through examining a number of key autobiographical texts by writers
spanning the second half of the 20th and first decade of the 21st
century, in chronological order: Leiris, Sarraute, Perec and Modiano.
Syllabus:
Week 1
Introduction
Week 2
L’Age d’homme
Week 3
L’Age d’homme
Week 4
Enfance
Week 5
Enfance
Week 6
Reading Week
Week 7
W ou le souvenir d’enfance
Week 8
W ou le souvenir d’enfance
Week 9
Un pedigree
Week 10
Un pedigree
Week 11
Revision
Assessment Table:
Essential Texts:
Monday 7.40-9 (Term 2 only)
Assignment
Essay
Description
3500 words
Michel Leiris, L’âge d’homme
Nathalie Sarraute, Enfance
Weighting
100%
Georges Perec, W ou le souvenir d’enfance
Patrick Modiano, Un Pedigree
Other Important
Information: