• FRE 5756: Old French. Prof. Lori Walters
• FRW 5588: The Enlightenment in France. Prof. Bill Cloonan
• FRW5595: Nineteenth-Century French Literature and Culture. Prof. Noemie Parrat

FRW 5588 - Prof. Bill Cloonan
The Enlightenment in France

AIM: This course will focus primarily, but not exclusively, on the Enlightenment as it manifested itself in France. The central thesis of Enlightenment thought is that human problems, be they political or personal, can be, and must be, dealt with exclusively in terms of the capacity of the human mind to clarify, analyze, evaluate and judge. This is not to say that Enlightenment thinkers were necessarily irreligious or even anti-clerical; the impact of the Enlightenment is really much more radical than that. For these people religion as a social institution could be either stabilizing or harmful depending upon circumstances. However, under no circumstances could religious faith be considered a source of knowledge. Humanity, as Kant put it, was emerging from its infancy and the force behind this emergence was confidence in the capacity of the human mind to identify and resolve human problems. Nonetheless, as deeply as were the Enlightenment intellectuals committed to the rule of logic and reason, there remains a strong current of emotionalism in their thinking and most certainly in their creative works. We will follow the emergence and development of Enlightenment thought as it manifested itself in essays, literature and the visual arts.

Among the texts that will be studied are Kant’s essay, “What is Enlightenment,” Diderot’s Rameau’s Nephew, Voltaire’s Candide, Lesage’s Turcaret, Sade’s Justine, Laclos’s Dangerous Alliances, and Rousseau’s Reveries. The course will end with two twentieth century texts: Bernhard Schlink’s The Reader and Michel Foucault’s essay, “What is Enlightenment.” These two works will help us evaluate the relevance of the Enlightenment for the post-Auschwitz world.

Readings:

1. Immanuel Kant, Foundations of Ethics
2. Voltaire, Candide
3. Montesquieu, Lettres persanes
4. Sade, Justine ou les malheurs de la vertu
5. Rousseau, Les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire
6. Beaumarchais, Le Mariage de Figaro
7. Diderot, Le Neveu de Rameau
8. Chorderlos de Laclos, Les Liaisons dangereuses
9. Bernhard Schlink, The Reader
10. Michel Foucault, “What is Enlightenment?”

FRW 5595 - Prof. Noémie Parrat
Graduate Seminar on 19th Century French Literature and Culture -
The Myth of the Femme Fatale in 19th Century Fiction, Poetry and Painting

This course examines the portrayal of female characters as femmes fatales in 19th century fiction, poetry and painting. After an introduction to the historical and literary origins of the myth of the femme fatale and to the archetypical figure of Salomé, we will focus on novels, poems and a short story containing a femme fatale as a main character. We will take into account the pictorial renditions of this myth in Edouard Manet’s and Gustave Moreau’s masterpieces. We will also look at the social context of the time, in particular at the real femmes fatales in French society and the power they exerted upon the men fascinated by them. The texts chosen offer variations on the archetype of the femme fatale: from Machiavellian in Balzac’s La Cousine Bette, exotic in Mérimée’s Carmen and in Flaubert’s Salammbô, to cruel in Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal, cannibalistic in Zola’ s Nana and totally perverse in Rachilde’s Monsieur Vénus. The myth of the femme fatale has mainly inspired male writers; to offer a contrast, we will end this course by reading a novel written by Rachilde, a female decadent writer. Critical and theoretical texts pertaining to the myth of the femme fatale and to notions of gender will be read in conjunction with the primary literature. This course will be taught in French.