Introductory description

Paris is arguably the city of modernity. For two centuries it has been the site of innovative architecture and planning which seeks to be at the cutting edge internationally. More generally, its pioneering creativity combines the rationality of the Enlightenment with an aesthetic confidence developed over many years. As well as being a prime example of the creative aspects of modernity, Paris at the same time exemplifies modernity’s ruthlessness and destruction, as traditional ways of life are swept aside, and as individuals become victims of the greater and grander plan. Paris is thus a place of hardship and revolt as well as confidence and beauty. This module will allow us to explore cultural representations of the city with ambition and breadth. The module will focus on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as a period of great political change and modernisation. The approach will be resolutely interdisciplinary, and will encompass developments in socio-economics; architecture and planning; history; politics; art; music; literature; and cultural events.

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.

Week 1
Introduction: overview of key social, political, historical and literary contexts
Week 2-3
The flâneur and Baudelaire's Paris:
Baudelaire, Le Peintre de la Vie Moderne (1863)
Week 4-5
Third Republic Paris, capitalism, and corrpution:
Key excerpts from Maupassant, Bel Ami (1885)
Week 6-7
The Belle Epoque, women, and the city:
Colette, Gigi (1944)
Week 8-9
Americans in Paris:
Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast (1964)
James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son (1955)
Week 10
Library research session/Assessment advice session

Learning outcomes

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

• Identify, analyse and discuss critically key features of modern French literary texts that address different aspects of the representation of Paris in the period from 1860-2000
• Read and analyse texts and other historical sources with deep understanding by applying their knowledge of historiography, historical scholars, cultural critics and literary theorists
• Initiate reasoned critical reflection which engages with current scholarship at the forefront of modern and contemporary French studies and historical scholarship about key aspects of the representation of the city of Paris.
• Demonstrate the capacity to analyse closely the formal and thematic features of modern French literary texts and historical sources
• Communicate effectively to an audience their independently researched scholarly view by devising and writing their own research essay project

Indicative reading list

Illustrative set texts:
We will study a selection of excerpts and complete texts from the following list (set texts will vary and we will not cover all the texts in every year of the course):
Baudelaire, Le Peintre de la Vie Moderne (1863) and Le Spleen de Paris (1869)
Zola, Au bonheur des dames (1883)
Maupassant, Bel Ami (1885)
Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast (1964)
Colette, Gigi (1944)
Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son (1955)
Leïla Sebbar, La Seine était rouge (2009)
François Maspero, Les Passagers du Roissy-Express (2004)

Sample secondary material:
Baguley, David. Napoleon III and his Régime: An Extravaganza (2000)
Berman, Marcel. All that is Solid Melts into Air, London, Verso, 1983.
Bernard, Jean-Pierre. Les Deux Paris: Les Représentations de Paris dans la Seconde Moitié du XIXème Siècle, Paris, Champ Vallon, 2001.
Carmona, Michel, and Patrick Camiller. Haussmann: His Life and Times and the Making of Modern Paris (2002)
Cohen, Evelyne. Paris dans l'imaginaire national de l'entre-deux-guerres. Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1999.
Cooper, Barbara T. and Mary Donaldson-Evans, (eds.) Moving Forward, Holding Fast: The Dynamics of Nineteenth-Century French Culture (1997)
Gullickson, Gay L. Unruly Women of Paris: Images of the Commune, Cornell University Press, 1996.
Haavik, Kristof Haakon, In Mortal Combat : The Conflict of Life and Death in Zola's Rougon-Macquart (2000)
Harvey, David. Paris, Capital of Modernity, Routledge, 2003.
Horne, Alisdair. Seven Ages of Paris: Portrait of a City, London, Pan, 2003. (new edn.)
Marshall, Richard D. Paris 1900: The Great World’s Fair, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1967.
de Moncan, Patrice. Le Paris d'Haussmann (Les Éditions du Mécène, 2012)
Magraw, Roger, France 1815-1914 :The Bourgeois Century (1983)
Mitterand, Henri, Zola et le naturalisme (1986)
Sewell, William H. Work and Revolution in France, Cambridge, CUP, 1980.
Sperber, Jonathan, The European Revolutions, 1848-1851, Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Traugott, Mark. The French Worker. Berkley and Los Angeles: The University of California Press, 1993.

Research element

Students will be required to devise their own research question for the assessed research essay. They will also need to complete some research tasks for the close analysis task. The research forum of the final week offers an opportunity to carry out original research on nineteenth-century Paris. By taking advantage of the extensive online resources now available on Gallica and other platforms students have the chance to develop their skills of independent research and oral presentation, to enrich their work for this module and to work collaboratively on their chosen topic.

Interdisciplinary

Modules in SMLC frequently transcend disciplinary boundaries. Students employ one or more of textual analysis, sociological enquiry, discourse analysis, critical theory, archival research, historical source study, and many more skills. This module is interdisciplinary through its use of multiple critical frameworks and blend of textual and other historical source materials.

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 and knowledge of the representation of the city of Paris through history 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.