FR1112 The Individual and Society: Key Works
Terms: 1- 2
Convenor: Joseph Harris
Assessment:
Coursework:
- essay 1: 1,250-1,500 words (30%)
- essay 2: 1,500 – 2,000 words (60%)
Moodle assessment (10%) (three pre-block tests)
(Formative written work is set in Term 1.)
Overview:
This course examines images of French society through a selection of four key literary texts and concentrates on how questions of social change, social mobility, success and failure, ambition and honour, oppression and alienation have been portrayed. The classes will offer a taste of the literature of the relevant periods, along with a discussion of its distinguishing features, and an overview of its intellectual, social, and historical background.
The texts to be studied in 2018-19 (in order of being taught) are:
Term 1
François Mauriac, Thérèse Desqueyroux (Paris: Livre de Poche, Grasset, 1973)
CLC students ONLY: François Mauriac, trans. Gerard Hopkins, Thérèse (London: Penguin, 2002)
Philippe Claudel, Le Rapport de Brodeck (Paris: Livre de Poche, 2009)
CLC students ONLY: Philippe Claudel, Brodeck, trans. John Cullen (New York: Anchor Books, 2010)
Term 2
Molière, Le Misanthrope (any edition)
CLC students ONLY: The Misanthrope, in Four French Plays, trans. by John Edmunds, introd. by Joseph Harris (Penguin, 2013)
Françoise de Graffigny, Lettres d'une Péruvienne (any edition)
CLC students ONLY: Letters of a Peruvian Woman (Oxford: Oxford World's Classics, 2009)
Key Bibliography:
J. Lyons, French Literature: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: OUP, 2010) [highly recommended for purchase, cheap and accessible]
S. Kay, T. Cave, and M. Bowie, A Short History of French Literature (Oxford: OUP, 2006)
A New History of French Literature, ed. D. Hollier (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1994)
R. Mettam, D. Johnson, French History and Society. The Wars of Religion to the Fifth Republic, (London: Methuen, 1974)
James McMillan, Modern France 1880-2002 (Oxford: OUP, 2003)