FR3126 Redefining the Erotic
2018-9 Terms 1 and 2
Course Convenor: Prof James Williams
Assessment: formative piece of work (0%); in-class presentation (20%); long essay (80%)
Since the rise of the feminist and gay movements in France in the early 1970s, many new writers and filmmakers have sought to address the changing erotic relations between the sexes. This has led them to explore the links between gender, sexuality and textuality, particularly from the double perspective of the narrator and reader/spectator. This course will examine key works by some of the most exciting contemporary French writers and filmmakers. It will include formal analysis of literary and cinematographic style, an engagement with important theoretical work on gender, psychoanalysis, autobiography/’autofiction’, and film spectatorship, as well as a general discussion of social and political themes such as AIDS, queer politics, pornography and censorship. The course aims ultimately to determine whether, as some critics are now arguing, French literature and cinema have entered the era of the ‘post-erotic’.
Texts and films to be studied will include the following (all available in English translation or, in the case of film, with English subtitles):
Texts:
M. Duras, La maladie de la mort / The Malady of Death (Grove, 1986)
H. Guibert, A l’ami qui ne m’a pas sauvé la vie / Crazy for Vincent (Semiotexte, 2017)
M. Houellebecq, Les particules élémentaires / Atomised (Vintage, 2001)
C. Angot, L’Inceste / Incest (Archipelago, 2017)
Films:
J. Balasko, Gazon Maudit
C. Collard, Les nuits fauves
C. Denis, Beau Travail/L’Intrus
V. Despentes, Baise-moi
S. Lifshitz, Wild Side