Introductory description

This module will introduce you to the history of the association between love and language, while enabling you to explore what love, desire and sex might mean in earlier periods and how this might challenge our views of these states today. We will ask how French as a language of love has been used, over time, to express social preoccupations (about gender, power, political engagement) and emotional preoccupations (about self and other, intimacy, rejection, joy).

Module web page

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

Term 1:

Verse tales

• Marie de France, Guigemar
• Anon, la Châtelaine de Vergy

Love and power in French poetry
Poetry anthology, including

• Divine judgement: the victim speaks out. Villon, ‘La Ballade des pendus’
• Gender, poet and muse: the Renaissance sonnet (Ronsard, Du Bellay, Labé, Des Roches)
• State power challenged : the poet and the court : Les Fables de la Fontaine

Term 2
Prose : Love, power and the body : gender and independence

The novel

• Mme de Graffigny, Lettres d’une péruvienne
  The short story
• Marguerite de Navarre, l’Heptaméron (selected tales)
• Maupassant, Boule de suif (selected tales)
  Theatre: Love, language and betrayal
  o Racine, Phèdre
  o Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• An ability and willingness to engage with other cultures, appreciating their distinctive features.
• Ability to use the sources to discuss a range of topics in formal and informal situations.
• Knowledge, awareness and understanding of one or more cultures and societies, other than their own.
• Ability to access, read and critically analyse primary and secondary source materials.
• Awareness and understanding of the conventions associated with the different genres covered in the module and ability to trace their development over time

Indicative reading list

Guigemar
** Gaunt, Simon, Retelling the Tale : An Introduction to Medieval French Literature (London: Duckworth, 2001)

• Bloch, R. Howard, The Anonymous Marie de France (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003)
  ** Burgwinkle, William, ‘Queering the Celtic: Marie de France and the men who don’t marry’, in Sodomy, Masculinity and Law in Medieval Literature: France and England, 1050-1230 (Cambridge: CUP, 2004), pp. 138-69
  ** Mikhaïlova, Milena, Le présent de Marie (Paris: Diderot, 1996), pp. 65-84
• Ménard, Philippe, Les Lais de Marie de France, 3rd edn. (Paris : PUF, 1997)

La Châtelaine de Vergy
L. A. Arrathoon, ‘La Châtelaine de Vergy: A Structural Study’, Language and Style 7 (1974), 151-80
Linda Cooper, ‘Irony as Courtly Poetic Truth in La Châtelaine de Vergy’, Romanic Review 75.3 (May 1984), 273-82
Edelgard Dubruck, ‘La Rhétorique du désespoir: Didon et la Châtelaine de Vergy’, in Jean Dufournet (ed.), Relire le ‘Roman d’Enéas’ (Geneva: Slatkine, 1985)
Steven R. Guthrie, ‘Chivalry and Privacy in Troilus and Criseyde and La Chastelaine de Vergy’, Chaucer Review 34.2 (1999), 150-73
Tony Hunt, ‘The Art of Concealment: La Chastelaine de Vergi’, French Studies 47 (1993), 129-41
Laurence de Looze, ‘The Untellable Story: Language and Writing in La Chastelaine de Vergi’, French Review 59 (1985), 42-50
J-Ch. Payen, ‘Structure et sens de la Châtelaine de Vergi’, Le Moyen Age 2 (1973), 209-30
Ben Ramm, ‘Making Something of Nothing: The Excesses of Storytelling in the Lais of Marie de France and La Chastelaine de Vergi’, French Studies 60.1 (2006), 1-13
J. Rychner, ‘La Présence et le point de vue du narrateur dans deux récits courts: Le Lai de Lanval et La Châtelaine de Vergi’, Vox Romanica 39 (1980), 86-103
A. C. Spearing, The Medieval Poet as Voyeur. Looking and Listening in Medieval Love-narratives (Cambridge: CUP, 1993)
Paul Zumthor, ‘De la chanson au récit: La Chastelaine de Vergi’, Vox romanica 27 (1968), 77-95, repr. Langue, texte, énigme (Paris: Seuil, 1975), pp. 219-39

Mme de Graffigny
Mesch, ‘Did women have an Enlightenment? Graffigny’s Zilia as female philosophe’, Romanic Review 89 (1998), 523-37
Miller, French Dresssing: Women, Men and Ancien Régime Fiction (1995)
Monglond, A., Le Préromantisme (1966)
Mylne, Vivienne, The Eighteenth-Century Novel: Techniques of Illusion (Manchester 1965)
Stewart, Joan Hinde, Gynographs: French Novels by Women of the Late Eighteenth Century (1993)
Todd, Janet, Sensibility: An Introduction (1986)

Marguerite de Navarre
Baker, Mary J, 'Shame in the Heptaméron', Medievalia et Humanistica: Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Culture 23 (1996), 53 – 65.
Mary J. Baker (1992) 'Rape, Attempted Rape, and Seduction in the Heptaméron', Romance Quarterly, 39:3, 271-281

François Rigolot, Magdalen's Skull: Allegory and Iconography in Heptameron 32 Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 47, No. 1 (Spring, 1994), pp. 57-73.
Sommers, Paula, ‘Vision and Voyeurism in the "Heptaméron: Re-Reading the 43rd Novella" Modern Language Studies, Vol. 22, No. 1 (Winter, 1992), pp. 88-95.
Schrambach Bendi Benson, 'Reading, Writing & Correcting: Marguerite de Navarre’s Feministic Project in L’Heptaméron', Women in French Studies, Special Issue 2012, pp. 18-35.
Virtue, N. (2002) Storytelling in transitions: character individuation in Marguerite de Navarre's Heptameron. In: Romance Notes. United States: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 42(3), pp.283-294.
Cholakian, Patricia Francis. Rape and writing in the Heptaméron of Marguerite de Navarre. Carbondale : Southern Illinois University Press, 1991. Good on Story 4.
Mckinlay, Mary and Lyons, John (eds), Critical Tales: New Studies of the Heptameron and Early Modern Culture (Philadelphia , 1993). Lots of useful articles in here.

Maupassant
Mary Donaldson-Evans, ‘The Decline and Fall of Elisabeth Rousset: Text and Context in Maupassant's 'Boule de suif', Australian Journal of French Studies 18.1 (1981), 16 – 34.
Geoffrey Strickland, 'Maupassant, Zola, Jules Valles and the Paris Commune of 1871', Journal of European Studies, 13: 4 (1983), 289-307.
Rachel Millick, ‘Fiction and Journalism in Maupassant: A Footnote to Boule de suif’, French Studies Bulletin, 21 (1986-87 Winter), 7 - 10
John Moreau, 'Maupassant's Empty Frame: A New Look at "Boule de suif"', French Forum, 34: 2 (2009): 1-16.
Charles Castella, Les contes et nouvelles réalistes de Maupassant, apôtre du marché Dieu : lecture sociogénétique (Lausanne, 2000)
Christopher Lloyd and Robert Lethbridge (eds), Maupassant: conteur et romancier (U. of Durham, 1994).
Pierre Danger, Pulsion et désir dans les romans et nouvelles de Guy de Maupassant (Paris, 1993).

Racine
Edward James and Gillian Jondorf, Racine: Phèdre (E book: Cambridge University Press, 1994):
Brian Nelson, 'Racine: in the labyrinth', in The Cambridge Introduction to French Literature: (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 32–38.
J. P. Short, Racine: Phèdre (London : Grant & Cutler, 1998)
On seventeenth-century theatre
Richard Goodkin, ‘Neoclassical Dramatic Theory in Seventeenth-Century France’, in A Companion to Tragedy (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), pp. 373 – 392
Nicholas Hammond, 'Rules and Terms', in Creative Tensions: An Introduction to Seventeenth-Century French Literature (London: Duckworth, 1997), pp. 11 - 23.
Michael Hawcroft, 'Tragedy: mid- to late-seventeenth century', in The Cambridge History of French Literature (Online version: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 262-273
John D. Lyons, 'Tragedy and Fear' in The Cambridge Companion to French Literature (Online version: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 70 - 84.
Maximillian E. Novak, 'Drama 1660-1740', in Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, vol 4 (Online version: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 167-183.

Rostand
BOURGEOIS, J., 2008. Cyrano de Bergerac d'Edmond Rostand: Le Théâtre dans le théâtre. Revue d'Histoire Littéraire de la France, 108(3), pp. 607-620.
Bugliani, A. 2003, "Man Shall Not Live by Bread Alone: The Biblical Subtext in Cyrano de Bergerac", Renascence: Essays on Values in Literature, vol. 56, no. 1, pp. 55-62.
Sweetser, E. 2006, "Whose Rhyme Is Whose Reason? Sound and Sense in Cyrano de Bergerac", Language and Literature: Journal of the Poetics and Linguistics Association, vol. 15, no. 1, pp. 29-54.
Hall,Robert A.,,Jr 1995, How Cyrano's Bravoure Turns Comedy into Tragedy, Linguistica.
Ditmann, L. 1996, "Rostand novateur? De quelques particularités sémiologiques présentées par l'Acte Premier de Cyrano de Bergerac" in Les Propos spectacle: Etudes de pragmatique théâtrale, ed. S. Golopentia, Peter Lang, , pp. 157-166.

View reading list on Talis Aspire

International

All modules delivered in SMLC are necessarily international. Students engage with themes and ideas from a culture other than that of the UK and employ their linguistic skills in the analysis of primary materials from a non-Anglophone context. Students will also be encouraged to draw on the experiences of visiting exchange students in the classroom and will frequently engage with theoretical and critical frameworks from across the world.

Subject specific skills

It will build students’ capacity to engage with aspects of French culture through analysis of this primary material and through seminar discussion aimed at deeper critical thinking. In particular, students’ awareness of French cultural landmarks will be enhanced through lectures and seminars which engage in scholarship in the field.

Transferable skills

All SMLC culture modules demand critical and analytical engagement with artefacts from target-language cultures. In the course of independent study, class work and assessment students will develop the following skills: written and oral communication, creative and critical thinking, problem solving and analysis, time management and organisation, independent research in both English and their target language(s), intercultural understanding and the ability to mediate between languages and cultures, ICT literacy in both English and the target language(s), personal responsibility and the exercise of initiative.