FREN 375 Syllabus Explorations in French Literature

MFS Modern Fiction Studies, 1986

The Year's Work in Modern Language Studies, 2020

, 122 pp < https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01794385/document > is a collection of cultural and literary studies by a range of junior academics, mostly doctoral students of the Centre d'Histoire Culturelle des Sociétés Contemporaines, that enriches our understanding of the history of the body seen through a variety of contexts and methodological lenses. While Marie Kawthar Daouda, 'La Ver de terre amoureux du cadavre : sublimation du corps putride dans l'héritage romantique du finde-siècle' (81-92) draws insightfully on construals of the dead body in fin-de siècle literature, the essay by Marion Simonin 'Corps sensible, corps imaginaire. La poésie de Jules Supervielle et Henri Michaux' (62-70) explores from an illuminating philosophical perspective how evolving concepts of the body had an impact on Supervielle's and Michaux's poetic depiction of corporeal reality. Portraits dans la littérature: De Gustave Flaubert à Marcel Proust, ed. Julie Anselmini and Fabienne Bercegol, Garnier, 472 pp. is a collection of studies that came out of an international conference on the same topic held at Cerisy in August 2016. The essays provide a broad panorama of the relations of portraiture to French literature in late-nineteenth and early twentieth century, thereby bringing under scrutiny a literary reference point that is seldom mentioned by critics or historians of literature. Of particular interest is Stéphane Chaudier, 'Proust et l'art du portrait' (53-79) which evokes P.'s uses of the literary portrait no longer with respect to its artistic equivalent but now in its own right. Paradoxically, as he argues, P.'s portraits are not what they seem from the perspective of representativity, their very ambiguity being only one of the author's many subtle devices.

The Year's Work in Modern Language Studies, 2016

pp., is an attractive introduction to medieval french literature by a scholar better known for his work on later centuries. The selection of texts is based on the concept of 'cultural reference', i.e. on texts which function as artistic milestones, such as the Chanson de Roland, Tristan et Iseut, the Roman de Renart, or the Roman de la Rose. These titles, among others, are all covered in the first three chapters dealing with texts up to 1300 (pp. 1-112); the rest of the book is devoted to late medieval and Renaissance texts. Short excerpts, quoted in modern french, are commented upon, and the overall approach is sociological, offering information on genre and basic political, economic, intellectual, and religious events and facts, presented in a simple but not simplistic way. Medievalism: Key Critical Terms, ed. Elizabeth Emery and Richard Utz, cambridge, brewer, xii + 286 pp., consists of a series of 30 short alphabetically arranged chapters, written by specialists, defining key terms from Archive to Troubadour. Although the focus is mainly Anglo-Saxon and the material drawn from English rather than Romance studies, the volume is also of interest to scholars dealing with romance and the french Middle Ages. History of the Discipline. Once again, this branch of our discipline has proved particularly productive, generating several edited volumes focusing on groundbreaking publi cations, established Romance-studies scholars, or on review chapters treating the present state of the discipline in a given country. Most studies take a biographical approach. This point is specifically addressed by Michel Zink, 'Un médiéviste dans la forêt du roman', pp. 15-24 of Le Savant dans les lettres, ed. Valérie cangemi, Alain corbellari, and Ursula bähler, Rennes U.P., 286 pp., who draws a slightly ironic self-portrait and uses facts from his own biography to claim that scholars have always been attracted to fiction, letters, and imagination, so that many of them end up both producing and researching on literature. This tendency even gave rise to a genre in its own right in 19th-c. Germany: the Professorenroman, or a novel with a professor as protagonist. Alain corbellari, 'Pourquoi mettre la philologie en biographies?', pp. 129-38 of Érudition et fiction. Troisième rencontre internationale Paul-Zumthor, Montréal, 13-15 octobre 2011, ed. Éric Méchoulan, Garnier, 327 pp., pursues the same line as Zink and others who take advantage of their own experience both as scholars and novelists to interrogate the relationship between fiction and science. Drawing on autobiographical backgrounds blended with many quotations from famous literary theorists, c. demonstrates that both poles inevitably join in the field of philology, and how therefore a biographical approach can be profitable when applied to the field of the history of the discipline. Claude Fauriel et l'Allemagne. Idées pour une philologie des cultures, ed. Geneviève Espagne and Udo Schöning, champion, 504 pp., is a study of claude fauriel (1772-1844), who in 1830, long before the first chair of french literature was established in france, was appointed professor of foreign Literatures at the Sorbonne. He was responsible for a wide range of subjects, from Modern Greek to Old Norse, from Italian to German and Occitan. Although most of his findings and opinions were severely criticised by the ensuing generation of scholars, his influence was considerable in his time. Several contributions stress the importance of his work in a European context, and discuss his methods and their limits in several fields, both literary and linguistic. Of particular interest for french studies are Luc fraisse, 'fauriel et l'émergence des méthodes de l'histoire littéraire' (27-76), on methods of literary history, which did not then exist in french universities; Agnès Graceffa, 'fauriel médiéviste: une approche culturelle du Moyen Âge' (77-92), on the approach to medieval studies, seen not only as a philological, but a cultural feature; Richard Trachsler, 'fauriel et l'Histoire littéraire de la france' (137-50), on fauriel's contributions to the Histoire littéraire de la France, in particular his attempt to link Arthurian literature to the South of france; and Dorothea Kullmann, 'claude fauriel et l'épopée' (191-242), on fauriel's theories on epic literature, which he compared to Greek poetry. An appendix (461-75) provides a list of manuscripts regarding epic literature generated by fauriel. Patrick Moran, 'La poétique et les études médiévales: accords et désaccords', PerM (online), 35, presents an extensive overview of the use and impact of literary theory in medieval studies, especially french. Starting from the 19th c., when scholars studied literary texts as historical documents rather than works of art, the author comments on Vinaver, Zumthor, and then the different post-structuralist movements up to contemporary studies of manuscripts. He concludes that theory raises crucial questions concerning genre, the nature of the text, etc., which are still valid in the context of contemporary research. In 1946, the belgian scholar Robert Guiette published two articles that changed the way medievalists look at the lyric poetry of the Middle Ages. Jeff Rider, 'Introduction to Robert Guiette: formal Poetry in france in the Middle Ages' and 'The Adventure of formal Poetry', Revue électronique de littérature française (online), 8.1, a special issue entitled 'Speaking of the Medieval Today: french and francophone Medievalisms', ed. Alicia Montoya and Vincent ferré, gives a short presentation of the life and work of Robert Guiette and introduces his two famous essays, 'L'aventure de la poésie formelle', and 'La poésie formelle en france au Moyen Âge', together with English translations (78-91 and 92-100). Mihaela Voicu and catalina Girbea, 'Les "voies aventureuses" des études de littérature française médiévale en Roumanie', PerM (online), 35, offer a survey of medieval french Studies in Romania from its beginnings to the present day. The first holder of a chair of french literature was a pupil of Lanson, charles Drouhet, who covered the entire field from the Middle Ages to the 20th century. The first real medievalist was Sorina bercescu, who struggled with the communist regime and had to find ways of avoiding Marxist approaches when teaching. by the 1980s, a School of Medieval french Studies had emerged in bucharest and, less prominently, also at the University of cluj, even if no original books could be published for political reasons. Manuscripts, Textual Philology, and Methodology of Text Editing. The study of autographs pits textual editors against a number of paleographic and codicological issues, since scribe and author converge, bestowing a specific authoritative status on one particular copy amongst others. Two monographs explore the field of medieval autographs, presenting

Zea Books

This book focuses upon a dozen French writers who have helped to set the terms for contemporary French literature and its horizon of possibility. Though they have pursued significantly different paths, each one of them is committed to the principle of literary innovation, to making French literature new. They work in full cognizance of literary history and of the tradition that they inherit, even as they reshape that tradition in each of their books. They invite their readers to take a critical stance with regard to those books, and to participate actively in the construction of literary meaning. Both bold and mobile in their own practice, they encourage us to be just as agile in our own readerly practice, offering us a rare degree of franchise in a literary dynamic founded on the notion of articulation. Writers discussed include Raymond Queneau, Edmond Jabès, Georges Perec, Marcel Bénabou, Jacques Jouet, Marie NDiaye, Marie Cosnay, Bernard Noël, Jean Rolin, Jacques Serena, Julia De...

Course Description: This course covers important cultural, political, and artistic movements of the 16th and 17th centuries in France. The course follows thematic units (linguistic history, poetry, prose, religious and political history, and exploration) that highlight connections between current elements of French culture and their foundations in early modern French civilization. In addition to learning about the history of the period through readings and videos, students will read important texts from the Renaissance (Rabelais, a wide selection of poetry, Montaigne) and the Grand Siècle (Corneille,

Renaissance Studies, 2008

Reviews of books 131 writing, but the deployment of the term 'civility' to represent them all at times blurs its meaning, 'Civility' becomes, by turns, descriptive, honorific and epistemological. This is not to detract however from a book of great quality. And while its scholarly qualities are to be noted, it should be said, that its fine writing is one of the most enjoyable aspects and remains full of surprises. Preston quite competes with Browne in places.

What would a history of medieval literature in French that is not focussed on France and Paris look like? Taking as its starting point the key role played in the development of textual culture in French by geographical regions that are either at the periphery of French-speaking areas, or alternatively completely outside them, this article offers three case studies: first of a text composed in mid-twelfthcentury England; then of one from early thirteenth-century Flanders; and finally from late thirteenth-century Italy. What difference does it make if we do not read these texts, and the language in which they are written, in relation to French norms, but rather look at their cultural significance both at their point of production, and then in transmission? A picture emerges of a literary culture in French that is mobile and cosmopolitan, one that cannot be tied to the teleology of an emerging national identity, and one that is a bricolage of a range of influences that are moving towards France as well as being exported from it. French itself functions as a supralocal written language (even when it has specific local features) and therefore may function more like Latin than a local vernacular.