Introductory description

FR 256 (The Right in France, from the Dreyfus Affair to the Present) will feature on the list of Topics in French and Francophone Culture for intermediate-year students. It will build on module FR 121 (The Story of Modern France) by developing the students’ understanding of key issues and debates in modern and contemporary French politics, and their ability to engage closely and critically with a wide range of primary and secondary material. It complements other intermediate-year modules such as FR 251 (France and the World since 1945) and FR 264 (French Presidents and the Media). There are, however, no prerequisites for this module.

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.

This module will address the evolving theories, practices, and influence of the right in France from the late nineteenth century to the present. It begins with a discussion of right-wing ideology and activity at the time of the Dreyfus Affair, exploring the historiographical contention surrounding the emergence of a ‘new right’. Subsequent lectures and seminars examine the development of mass politics in the twentieth century, exploring the importance of veterans and youth movements in the interwar right, and the varieties of right-wing engagement among French collaborators during the German Occupation. The module then explores the leadership and legacies of Charles de Gaulle, the evolution of the extreme right from 1945 to the Front National, and the relationship between Gaullist and extreme right in contemporary France.

Module structure

Week 1: Defining the French right
Week 2: Avant-garde fascism and the fin-de-siècle
Week 3: Right-wing elites in the 1920s
Week 4: 1930s: the street, the people, and the world in crisis
Week 5: Collaborators: Pétain’s Vichy France
Week 6: Reading week
Week 7: Collaborationists: France and the New Order
Week 8: De Gaulle: exile, leadership, and legacy
Week 9: The extreme right from the Liberation to the Front National
Week 10: Right and extreme right in France today

Learning outcomes

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

• Ability, willingness and openness to engage with other cultures, appreciating their distinctive features
• Refined knowledge of language varieties, register, genre, nuances of meaning and language use
• Ability to access, read and critically analyse primary and secondary source materials in the target language
• Familiarity with the scholarship, methodologies, and critical debates relevant to the topics studied
• Ability to reflect widely and critically on the development of the French right over time, comparing and contrasting leaders, strategies and supporters
• Communicate effectively what has been learned both orally and in writing

Indicative reading list

Sample primary material

Module sourcebook (this includes a wide range of primary material, including political speeches, songs, caricatures, memoirs, pamphlets, and extracts from the press)
Audio-visual material (e.g. documentary film, speeches by de Gaulle) available from ina.fr
Robert Brasillach, Notre avant-guerre (1941)
Charles Maurras, La Contre-révolution spontanée (1943)
Charles de Gaulle, Discours et messages (1970)
Jean-Marie Le Pen, Pour la France: programme du Front National (1985)
Speeches by Marine Le Pen and extracts from the Rassemblement National website

Sample secondary material

Charles Sowerwine, France since 1870: Culture, Politics, and Society (2018)
René Rémond, Les Droites en France (1982)
Zeev Sternhell, Ni droite, ni gauche: l’idéologie fasciste en France (1983)
Mark Antliff, Avant-garde Fascism: the Mobilization of Myth, Art, and Culture in France, 1909–1939 (2007)
Nicholas Atkin and Frank Tallett (eds), The Right in France, 1789–1997 (1997)
Michel Winock, Nationalisme, anti-sémitisme et fascisme en France (2004)
Edward J Arnold, The Development of the Radical Right in France from Boulanger to Le Pen (2000)
Jessica Wardhaugh, Paris and the Right in the Twentieth Century (2007)
Sudhir Hazareesingh, In the Shadow of the General: Modern France and the Myth of de Gaulle (2012)

View reading list on Talis Aspire

Research element

One week of the module is based at the Modern Records Centre, either for a seminar in which students work on collections relating to collaboration and resistance, and/or for a two-hour session in which students curate their own exhibition based on this primary material. When the module includes an exhibition, students also have the option of analysing their chosen artefacts in their summative work.

Interdisciplinary

The module includes close analysis of musical, literary, and audio-visual material alongside more theoretical political texts, and draws on literary and historical approaches as well as on political science.

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 politics and culture through analysis of this primary material and through seminar discussion aimed at deeper critical thinking. In particular, students’ awareness of the Right in France will be enhanced through lectures and seminars which engage with 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.