Contemporary French Literature

Catalog description

Major authors and movements in French novel, drama, and poetry from Proust to the present. FR 460 Contemporary French Literature (3) This course is designed for advanced undergraduate work and it is taught in French. To function well in this course, students need to have passed an intermediate introductory course to French literature. The primary goal of FR 460 is to facilitate students acquisition of a coherent view of major contemporary literary movements, from modernism in poetry and drama, through surrealism, both lay and Christian humanistic fiction, and existentialism, to the absurd theatre, the nouveau roman, and post-modernism, ecriture feminine, anti-colonial and post-colonial literatures. Major authors are presented thru one of their works, taking into account the cultural, historical context in which they were developed. Instruction also comprises an initiation to basic theoretical notions on genres, literary techniques, and critical reading methodology. Contents will vary according to instructors choices but balance between periods, movements and genres is implied. Multi-media resources abound for the purpose of illustration and interdisciplinary considerations but the primary thrust is cultural/ literary enrichment, and the development of students reading and analytical skills in French. Web resources, excerpts, and shorter whole texts will be incorporated to the reading materials and will supplement the required books. Students are expected to read between ten and thirty pages according to the level of difficulty of the materials. No manual or anthology has been established a satisfactory choices for this course even though such tools exist, they generally do not treat the last third of the period properly. So FR 460 instructors have relied on a variety of primary texts to achieve as comprehensive yet coherent a survey of this overflowing century as possible. Occasionally a thematic approach has been attempted to introduce more cohesiveness in the selected readings but this must be combined with traditional, diacritical approaches so as to facilitate the students ability to see linkages between literature and history as well as other arts, as they pursue their French and other Liberal Arts majors.