Introductory description

In my research on interpersonal relations and social codes in the early modern period, the challenge and the excitement has been to 'get inside' another culture and to analyse how it wrestles with these universal human experiences. What images, symbols and metaphors are used? How do ideas about gender and social status inform perceptions of family roles and duties? How were children viewed in early modern France?

From our 21st-century perspectives, we bring a number of our own questions, critical approaches and pre-suppositions to the table: ideas about human psychology, medicine, gender, inherited characteristics and so on. The module will examine both 17th century perceptions and our own, including

seventeenth-century theories and fantasies about the relationship of the human person to his / her environment, and about the role of blood ties.
reflections on the human life cycle and family life:
medical questions (childbirth, the issue of abortion);
anxieties over power at the level of family and state (sibling and generational rivalry, the role of gender);
fantasies of the journey from innocence to sexual maturity (fairy tales and the unconscious).

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.

Weeks 1 – 3: Ethics of birth and death: the midwife’s tale Louise Bourgeois: Rècit veritable de la naissance de messeigneurs et dames les enfans de France, and Instructions à ma fille. Extracts that give account of royal births, and of the challenges – social, moral, medical and professional – that beset midwifery practice and its radical documentation in print. Weeks 4 – 5: Questions of authority and its origins: blood ties and birth rights Pierre Corneille, Rodogune Weeks 7 – 9: Are there any happy endings? From childish fantasy to adult anxiety Charles Perrault, Histoires ou contes du tems passé; Madame D'Aulnoy, Contes de fées. A selection. Week 10-: Stepping out of shadows: feminism and the mother-daughter bond Sévigné, Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, Mme de, lettres. A selection.

Learning outcomes

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

• Use knowledge acquired in lectures, seminars and from prescribed reading as basis for individual research [cognitive skills]
• Demonstrate relevant factual knowledge about the authors, texts, contexts and issues under discussion
• Demonstrate understanding of the texts at a thematic as well as linguistic and stylistic level. [subject knowledge]
• Develop linguistic grasp of the target language French, especially vocabulary and notion of style [professional skills]
• Critically analyse the texts and engage where appropriate with scholarly debates surrounding the texts[cognitive skills]
• Evaluate the literary devices proper to each genre of text under discussion [subject specific skills]
• Distinguish between different textual genres and the nature of the socio-cultural information that may be yielded from these [subject specific skills]

Indicative reading list

Louise Bourgeois: Rècit veritable de la naissance de messeigneurs et dames les enfans de France, and Instructions à ma fille (Droz). Text also available on the internet at http://gallica.bnf.fr/ Pierre Corneile, Rodogune. Text available on the internet at http://gallica.bnf.fr/ Charles Perrault, Les Contes de Perrault (Garnier-Flammarion) Madame d'Aulnoy, Contes de fées (available at http://gallica.bnf.fr/) Lettres Choisies de Mme de Sévigné (Ligaran - ebook)

Klairmont-Lingo, Alison, Louise Bourgeois: Midwife to the Queen of France: Diverse Observations (2017) Perkins, Wendy, Midwifery and Medicine in Early Modern France: Louise Bourgeois (1996) Read, Kirk, Birthing Bodies in Early Modern France: Stories of Gender and Reproduction (2011) Goodkin, Richard, Birth Marks: the Tragedy of Primogeniture in Pierre Corneille, etc. (2000) Watts, Derek A., Rodogune and Nicomède (1992) Mangerson, Polly, 'The Original Wicked Queen: From Poisoned Cup in Corneille’s Rodogune to Poisoned Apple in Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs' in Creation, Re-Creation, and Entertainment: Early Modernity and Postmodernity (2016) Seifert, Lewis, Fairy Tales, Sexuality, and Gender in France 1690 – 1715 (1996) Reddan, Bronwyn, Love, Power, and Gender in Seventeenth-Century French Fairy Tales (2020)

Landry, Bertrand, In Service to Maternal Love: Madame de Sévigné’s Household, in Papers on French seventeenth century literature (2020) Longino Farrell, Michèle, Performing Motherhood: The Sévigné Correspondance (1991)

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

This module will develop students’ linguistic skills through engaging with primary materials in the target language. 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 birth, sex & death in French 17thc culture & text 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.