French 71000 The Medieval French roman d’aventures (In
English) GC: T, 4:15-6:15,
3 credits, Professor Talarico
The Medieval Romance of Adventure In English (with some
readings in French) This course will focus on the French
romance of adventure (a poor definition of genre if there
ever was one!); romances written in the late-twelfth through
the mid-thirteenth centuries. While they stand side by side,
and emanate from the vernacular romance tradition of the
earlier Tristan legends, Marie de France, and most
especially, Chrétien de Troyes romances of King Arthur and
his court, our texts distance themselves from their
predecessors through their distinctive approach to familiar
themes of tournaments, ‘courtly love,’ the celebration of
feasts, male and female sexuality and desire, and the like.
Some of the themes discussed will be: the construction of
gender, the details of historical reality which frame these
romances and separate them from their predecessors, the
evolution of the romance genre. The texts studied, with one
exception (the Roman de Silence), are from the period of
roughly 1195-1230, a period, we will see, that witnessed a
dramatic shift in the writing, performance, and conception
of vernacular romance.
Our in-class readings will focus on four romances (required
purchases): Renaut. Gale ran de Bretagne, modern French
trans. Jean Dufournet (Paris: Champion, 1996) Jean Renart.
Le Roman de la rose ou Guillaume de Dole. English trans.
Patricia Terry and Nancy Vine Durling, (Philadelphia: U.
Pennsylvania Press, 1993). While this is a “handy”
translation, a much better one (and one that will be on
reserve) is the one by Regina Psaki: The Romance of the Rose
or Guillaume de Dole (New York: Garland, 1995). Gerbert de
Montreuil. Le Roman de la violette, modern French trans.
Mireille Demaules (Paris: Stock, 1992) Heldris of Cornwall
(?). Silence, ed. and trans. (facing page translation with
Old French) Sarah Roche-Mabdi (East Lansing: Colleagues
Press, 1992). These texts can be ordered from http://www.amazon.com
or http://www.amazon.fr. Used books can be purchased from
http://www.alibris.com. While the in-class focus will be on
these four romances, students will be expected to do a
variety of readings in earlier romances, especially those of
Chrétien de Troyes, as well as to consult secondary sources
(a bibliography will be distributed during the first class
session). Required work: an oral presentation; research
paper (minimum 20 pages). Both the oral presentation and the
research paper topic will be discussed with the instructor
within the first month of classes so that research can begin
immediately. A draft of the research paper will be due
before the Thanksgiving break.French 74000 Rousseau
GC: R, 4:15-6:15, 3 credits, Professor Brooks
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, perhaps the most creative of the
great French writers of the eighteenth century, is also
generally considered one of the great seminal thinkers of
the modern period. This course will focus on his major works
including the Confessions, the Rêveries du promeneur
solitaire, his two major discourses: the Discours sur les
sciences et les arts and the Discours sur l’origine de
l’inegalité and his major novel, La Nouvelle Heloise. Some
attention will be paid to recent criticism of Rousseau,
including that of Derrida, Paul de Man, Jean Starobinski,
Peter Brooks and Tony Tanner. Rousseau’s contributions to
the creation of modern autobiography, his critique of
Enlightenment thought, his influence on modem political
theory and his relationship to the creation of Romantic
literature in France will be among the topics of this
course. While the major works of Rousseau will be on reserve
in the Graduate School library, students are urged to
purchase for class use the titles cited above which are all
readily available in either the Garnier-Flammarion or the
Folio (Gallimard) series.
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French 71110 Problems in French Literary History GC:
M, 6:30-8:30, 3 credits, Professor Brown
Dans ce cours nous examinerons certaines oeuvres
essentielles dans l’évolution du genre romanesque. Il
s’agira d’étudier non seulement le texte des romans en
question mais aussi le rôle joue par le style, le narratif,
la mise en scène des personnages, etc. par rapport au
développement du genre. Une partie du cours sera consacrée à
la bibliographie d’études sur le genre en général et sur les
romans en particulier. Les cinq romans de base de ce cours
seront: 1) Madame de Lafayette : La Princesse de C1èves
(1678) ; 2) Laclos : Les Liaisons dangereuses (1782) ; 3)
Flaubert : Madame Bovary (1857) ; 4) Proust : Du côté de
chez Swann (1913) ; et 5) Céline: Voyage au bout de la nuit
(1932).
Ainsi qu’il est indiqué dans la description du «core
requirement » pour le programme de doctorat de français,
dans ce cours, un examen final sera donne qui fait partie du
«First examination >> requis par le Graduate Center.
II est fort conseille aux étudiants qui comptent
s’inscrire dans ce cours de se procurer le plus tot possible
les cinq romans de base dans l’édition indiquée ci-dessous,
ce qui permettra des allusions précises certaines parties du
texte: 1. La Princesse de Clèves (Bibliothèque Gallimard) ;
2. Les Liaisons dangereuses (Folio Classique) ; 3. Madame
Bovary (Folio Classique) ; 4. Du côté de chez Swann (Folio)
; 5. Voyage au bout de la nuit (Folio). Un site idéal où
l’on pourra commander ces textes a des prix très modérés est
Amazon.fr.
French 77800 Theory and Practice Translation I: French
to English Thursday, 6:30-8:30, Room TBA 3 credits,
Professor Sautman
This course is offered to students specializing in
French and/or in Spanish, with a view to allowing both
groups to work on their area of expertise, and to also share
in projects that overlap between their respective
literatures. Each student can work from the language of
their choice (French to English, Spanish to English, Spanish
to French to English) and be fully integrated in the
course’s proceedings. When translators approach a text, they
are confronted by questions of opacity, resilience, and wide
gaps in communicating the aesthetic and even semantic
breadth of textual matter. To seamlessly and effortlessly
glide from one linguistic space to another may be more
deceptive than effective. Thus, is translation merely a
matter of technique and expertise? Is it a creative act?
Does it reveal underlying hierarchies between cultures? It
is innocent of strategies of appropriation and reuse? In
working directly with a series of texts across two or three
languages (French, Spanish, and English) we will address
these questions, focusing on the problems of interpretation
and adaptation. To achieve this, we will look at a group of
famous texts from different periods and vastly different
textual genres, some of which stem directly from the other,
discussing the impact different approaches have on the
production of texts. We work collectively on these,
producing brief written assignments that reevaluate or
inflect translation; These texts are: François Villon, Le
Testament translation by Galway Kinnell. Tirso de Molina. El
Burlador de Sevilla, Molière, Dom Juan, and their reciprocal
translations (Spanish to English, French to English, Spanish
to French and vice-versa) Lesage, Histoire de Gil Blas de
Santillane (excerpts) Le Sage, Gil Bias de Santillana.
Traducci6n y Prologo de Francisco Jose de Isla. Editorial
Porrua, Mexico, 1990 (excerpts). Jacques Derrida,
Monolinguisme de l’Autre./Monolinguism of the
Other.(excerpts) Students also work in two smaller groups on
the translation and adaptation of one text per linguistic
group and collectively present that discussion to the class.
These texts are : French, Ahmadou Kourouma, Monne, Outrages
et Defis. Spanish: Federico Garcia Lorca, Poeta en Nueva
York. Finally, each student in the course presents an
individual project, consisting of an original translation of
a work not previously translated, comprising a minimum of 25
pages and not to exceed one hundred, subject to the
instructor’s approval. Students are asked to choose their
text by the third week of the semester, to begin working on
it immediately, and to bring problems encountered in their
work to the class meeting for discussion. The final work is
turned in as a term paper during examination week.
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French 86000 Ecriture savante écriture populaire dans
la poésie francophone du vingtième siècle GC: T, 2:00-4:00,
3 credits, Professor Glissant
Les oeuvres d’Aimé Césaire et de Saint-John Perse abondent
en thèmes savants, souvent scientifiques ou techniques ,
dont la signification profonde peut être recherchée. Ils
peuvent aussi être mis en parallèle avec le style à la fois
rituel et convenu des poèmes de L.S. Senghor. Ces aspects de
la poésie entrent-ils en contradiction avec le rythme
populaire des oeuvres de L.G.Damas par exemple ? Ne
s’agit-il pas de deux démarches convergentes, vers une autre
manière de fréquenter le monde ? Les poètes créolophones
sont-ils concernés ici? Aime Césaire S-J. Perse Oeuvres
poétiques L.-S. Senghor L.-G.Damas Les poèmes en créole
seront polycopiés pour le cours.
French 77010 Techniques of Literary Research GC: W,
6:30-8:30, 4 credits, Professor Sautman
French 87100 French Feminism (In English) GC: T,
6:30-8:30, 3 credits, Professor Stanton WSCP 81000
This course will examine the complex development of
different forms of 20th-century French Feminism, from the
socialist and pacifist conferences of the early 1 900s and
the conservative feminism of the 1930s, to the
existentialism of Simone de Beauvoir and l’écriture feminine
of the 1970s, down to the legislative patrie movement of
today. In the process, we will consider why France was the
last European country to give suffrage to women (in 1945);
why feminism never became a national movement in France
after the fight for abortion rights in 1974; and why
feminism has become a dirty word in France, often conflated
with Americanism. We will not limit ourselves to continental
France, but also discuss through our readings, French
Canada, the Caribbean and Africa since the 1960s.
Work for the course will include weekly paragraphs
(comments and/or questions) on the readings; two class
presentations; a 10-page research project or critical
analysis; and a final exam. Authors to be read include:
Auclert, Brion, Pelletier, Wittig, Leclerc, Beyala, Ba,
Cixous, Irigaray, Kristeva, Delphy, Le Doeuf, Agacinsky, and
Badinter.
The course will be conducted in English; readings are in
French; but wherever possible, translations will be placed
on reserve.
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