98162

FREN 201 Intermediate French I

Marina van Zuylen

M . . . . . T . Th .

10:30 - 11:30 am 10:30 - 11:50 am

OLINLC 206 OLINLC 206

FLLC

For students who have completed three to five years of high-school French or who have already acquired a solid knowledge of elementary grammar. In this course, designed as an introduction to contemporary French civilization and culture, students will be able to reinforce their skills in grammar, composition and spoken proficiency, through the use of short texts, newspaper and magazine articles, as well as video.

98516

FREN 202 Intermediate French II

Odile Chilton

M . . Th . . T . . .

9:20 - 10:20 am 9:20 - 10:20 am

OLIN 309 OLIN 310

FLLC

For students with three to four years of high school French or who have acquired a solid knowledge of elementary grammar. In this course, designed as an introduction to contemporary French civilization and culture, students will be able to reinforce their skills in grammar, composition and spoken proficiency, through the use of short texts, newspaper and magazine articles, as well as video.

98230

FREN 215 French Translation

Odile Chilton

M . W . .

10:30 - 11:50 am

OLINLC 115

FLLC

Intended to help students fine-tune their command of French and develop a good sense for the most appropriate ways of communicating ideas and facts in French, this course emphasizes translation both as an exercise as well as a craft in its own right. The course will also address grammatical, lexical and stylistic issues. Translation will be practiced from English into French, and vice versa, with a variety of texts drawn from different genres (literary and journalistic). Toward the end of the semester, students will be encouraged to embark on independent projects.

98231

FREN 240 The Quest for Authenticity: Topics in French Literature

Eric Trudel

. T . Th .

9:00 - 10:20 am

OLIN 305

FLLC

Serving as an overview of modern French literature, this class will focus on short texts (poems, plays, essays, letters, short stories) that reflect the fragile relationship between selfhood and authenticity. From Rousseau’s ambitious program of autobiography to Sartre’s belief that we are inveterate embellishers when it comes to telling our own story, French literature has staged with relish the classic tension between art, artifice, and authenticity. This has not only inaugurated an intensely individual and unstable relationship to the notion of truth, but has implicated the reader in this destabilizing process. This class will explore how the quest for authenticity has led to radical reevaluations of literary style. Readings from Rousseau, Stendhal, Flaubert, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Proust, Gide, Sartre, Duras, Sarraute, Ernaux. Taught in French. Prerequisites: two years of college French (successful completion of the Intermediate) or permission by instructor.

98227

FREN 354 Literature of Private Life

Marina van Zuylen

. . W . .

1:30 -3:50 pm

OLIN 205

FLLC/DIFF

Cross-listed: Human Rights, Gender & Sexuality Studies The representation of private life in the nineteenth-century French novel coincided with the advent of Realism.  Realism not only described the institutions that shaped private life (i.e., marriage, education, religion), but dwelled also on the discrete dramas occurring backstage--the solitude of the spinster (Flaubert's A Simple Heart), the plight of the child (Vallès' The Child, Renard's Poil de Carotte), the ambiguities of married life (selections from Balzac), the despair of domesticity (Maupassant's A Woman's Life), and the nature of neuroses (Zola, Nana).  Using novels, stories, and short selections from journals (Adèle Hugo's, Journal), autobiographies (Sand's Story of my Life), and correspondences, this course will examine the emergence of writings previously considered too private, too personal to be viewed as literature.  Students will also uncover the techniques that help dramatize these highly subjective conflicts (interior monologue, free indirect discourse, early examples of flow of consciousness). Issues of gender, sexuality, and the role of women in defining domesticity will be central. In order to situate these texts within a tradition that rethinks the self, there will be additional readings by Locke, Descartes, Kant, and Shaftesbury.  Students will also read excerpts from the recent anthology History of Private Life, an invaluable research tool to examine the connection between literature, philosophy, social history, and anthropology. Taught in French.