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

Generic Reading lists can be found in Talis

Specific reading list for the module can be found on

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.