CLFR G4000x. Theory of Literature I. 3 pts.

Narrative theory and representations of time (Aristotle, Augustine, Kant); narrative forms and genres (myth, epic, drama, novel, history, biography, autobiography) from a variety of perspectives (Propp, Lévi-Strauss, Greimas, Barthes, Genette, Ricoeur, Danto, Pavel).

CLFR G4000y. Theory of Literature. 3 pts.

Intertextuality was invented in the 1960s to characterize interrelations between texts. Soon ubiquitous, it remains nonetheless problematic. Understood subversively, it refers to any echo of a text - anterior or not - in another text; in a more traditional usage, its meaning has been restricted to sources and influences. The theory and history of the notion needs to be reviewed, with examples of some of its applications.

CLFR G4001y. Theory of Literature II. 3 pts. What is an author, a text, a reader, an interpretation? What determines esthetic judgments? Readings will include Georges Bataille, Jacques Lacan, Maurice Blanchot, Paul de Man, Julia Kristeva, Jacques Derrida, and Jean-Luc Nancy.

CLFR G4001x. Theory of Literature: Roland Barthes. 3 pts. Reading Roland Barthes from Writing Degree Zero to Camera Lucida, with emphasis on theory, history, and criticism, on modernism and classicism.

CLFR G4002x. Theory of Literature I: Intertextuality Revisited. 3 pts.

Intertextuality was invented in the 1960s to characterize interrelations between texts. Soon ubiquitous, it remains nonetheless problematic. Understood subversively, it refers to any echo of a text - anterior or not - in another text; in a more traditional usage, its meaning has been restricted to sources and influences. The theory and history of the notion needs to be reviewed, with examples of some of its applications.

CLFR G4012. Some Puzzles for Theory. 3 pts. Theory has not purged commonsensical ideas about literature. We tend to harbor a double, conflicting consciousness, at once textual and popular. Restoring theory to its oppositional edge so as not to turn it into a positivist technique, we plan to define it through the notions it countered, asking also why they survived.

FREN G4025x or y. Practicum In French Language Pedagogy. 3 pts.

Designed for new Teaching Fellows. An introduction to the conceptual and practical tools of French language pedagogy.

CLFR G4090. Reading French Theory. 3 pts. Introduction to French formalism 1940-1970. A seminal article or chapter read or discussed each week. Sartre, Lévi-Strauss, Lacan, Blanchot, Benveniste, Althusser, Foucault, Barthes, Deleuze, Derrida, Genette, and their foreign masters: Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Saussure, Heidegger, Jakobson. Texts in English or French, discussion in English.

FREN G4105x. Introduction To Medieval Literature. 3 pts.

An introduction to the literature of the French Middle Ages from La Vie de Saint Alexis to Villon's Testament. The changes in the language are approached through the study of the literary context represented by a canon of texts, with frequent exercises in translation.

CLFR G4190y. Renaissance Lyric. 3 pts.

FREN G4203x. French Literature of the 16th Century. 3 pts.

Survey of prose: notably, Rabelais and Montaigne, and poetry, the Grands Rhétoriqueurs, Marot, Scève, the Pléiade, Desportes, the religious poets

FREN G4301x. French Literature of the 17th Century. 3 pts.

A one-semester survey of seventeenth-century French literature, with an emphasis on the relationship between literature and the major cultural, philosophical, and religious developments of the period.

FREN G4401. French Literature of the 18th Century. 3 pts.

The leading writers of the Age of Enlightenment, notably Montesquieu, Voltaire, Diderot, and Rousseau, and such major novelists as Lesage, Prévost, Marivaux, and Laclos.

FREN G4501x. French Literature of the 19th Century. 3 pts.

A survey and textual analysis of prose and poetry of the 19th century

FREN G4508. From Baudelaire To Structuralism: Ins and Outs of Criticism. 3 pts. Survey of French literary criticism as it shifts from rhetoric to history, from art to science, from impressionism to linguistics, psychoanalysis, semiotics, and after. Baudelaire, Sainte-Beuve, Taine, Lanson, Proust, Thibaudet, Bachelard, Sartre, Barthes.

FREN G4601y. French Literature of the 20th Century. 3 pts.

Introduction to the major literary and critical works of the 20th century.

FREN G6001. History and Structure of the French Language. 3 pts. Not offered in 2009-2010.

Situates the French language within the Romance languages by tracing its archeology from classical to popular Latin, then through Middle Ages. The basic notions of historical phonetics and an introduction to Old French. Translate texts from the 11th to the 15th centuries, with focus on those of 12th and 13th centuries.

FREN G6005. Stylistics. 3 pts. Not offered in 2009-2010.

The linguistic fundamentals of the study of style: the function of language; language and discourse; pragmatic aspects of communication; theories of literarity; notions of style; models of classic rhetoric. The theories and methods of modern stylistics. Style resources: lexicon; syntax; prosody; the grammar of the text; composition; narrative techniques; argumentation; metrics; prosodics. The text and the intertext. Stylistic analysis from the 16th to the 20th century of French texts in prose and in verse.

FREN G6310. Racine. 3 pts. A close reading of Racine's tragedies, with emphasis on the theory of the genre, the poetic language, the religious and social context, and the history of interpretation.

CLFR G6608. Modern Theories of Writing. 3 pts. French Theory and American Criticism In the 1980s

CLFR G6609. Textes De Rupture. 3 pts. Durkheim, Mauss, Gabriel Tarde.

CLFR G6625. Proust and the Arts. 3 pts. A reading of Proust's novel from the point of view of its literary, philosophical and artistic context in Europe: Schelling and Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Bergson, Wagner and Fauré, Tolstoy, Eliot and Hardy, Ruskin and Turner.

FREN G8000. Baudelaire's Le Spleen De Paris. 3 pts. Close reading of Baudelaire's prose poems, with relation to the history and theory of the genre, the contemporary movement from prosody to free verse, the definition of modernity, the reception and influence of the collection, and the problematic meaning of a text that still challenges interpretation.

FREN G8020x or y (Section 001). The Oral and the Written in Francophone Literature. 3 pts.

A study of what it means to transform oral Myths and Tales into written literature; to go, as Congolese writer Tchicaya U'Tamsi puts it, "de la chose orale à la chose écrite" (from the oral thing to the written thing). The way in which orature (oral literature) plays with itself and the way in which writing "plays" with orality will be studied through different francophone African authors and French ethnologists: Tchicaya U'Tamsi, Marcel Griaule, Blaise Cendrars, Amadou Hampate Ba, Birago Diop, Léopold Sedar Senghor, Abdoulaye Sadji, Bernard Dadie, Ousmane Soce Diop, Jean-Louis Copans, Philippe Couty.

FREN G8091x-G8092. Proseminar: Introduction To Literary Research. 3 pts.

Designed for first-year graduate students. An introduction to the conceptual and practical tools of literary research.

FREN G8093-G8094. Study Abroad: Research Under the French University System. 3-12 pts.

FREN G8102. The Poet and His Love. 3 pts. Not offered in 2009-2010.

This course will examine the emergence of lyric poetry in France in the Middle Ages and its special characteristics, the changes it experiences during this period, the causes that could account for these changes, and their importance for the definition and the understanding of the idea of poetry.

FREN G8200. Self- Interest Before Capitalism In Literature and Social Thought. 3 pts. Not offered in 2009-2010.

Literary and philosophical accounts of self-interest in the early modern period seeking to contextualize the emergence of the interest-paradigm in modern social theory. Authors include Montaigne, Hobbes, Moliere, Mandeville, Rousseau, Adam Smith, Max Weber, Marcel Mauss, and Norbert Elias.

FREN G8203. Rabelais. 3 pts. Not offered in 2009-2010.

A close reading of Rabelais' five books, with emphasis on narrative techniques and linguistic theories, political context and religious meaning, and the comic scheme.

FREN G8212. Montaigne. Not offered in 2009-2010. Prerequisites: Instructor's permission

A reading of Montaignes's Essais, with emphasis on the use of culture, philosophy of knowledge, and ethics; the self-portrait and the theory of writing.

CLFR G8220. The Commerce of the Self From Montaigne To Adam Smith. 3 pts. Not offered in 2009-2010.

Moral philosophy understood as a dialogue between French and English authors. Emphasis on theatricality and self-knowledge, merit and equality, ethics and economics. Montaigne, Hobbes, La Rochefoucauld, Mandeville, Rousseau, Adam Smith.

FREN G8220x. Literature and Ethics, Montaigne to Proust. 3 pts.

Examination of the uses, the powers, the values of literature. Its relation with the good life, both private and public. Its initiation to identity and difference. With close readings of texts and critics.

FREN G8235. Text and Image in the Middle Ages. 3 pts.

In a very specific subfield of text/image studies, we will lool at works with an iconographic project.

FREN G8237. 16th-Century Poetry In France: Genealogy and Loss. 3 pts. A tension between genealogy and its disruption pervades both early modern France and its literature. Introduction to the poetry of the period by examining the double impulse to search for origins (political, historical, poetic) and to lament their irreparable loss.

FREN G8300x. European Quarrels.

A study of the quarrels that structured the European intellectual debate before the Enlightenment, in literature, painting, music, and theology. Authors include Racine, Watteau, La Fontaine, and Couperin.

FREN G8312. Literature and Politics In the 17th Century. 3 pts. Political power and its representation in memoirs (Cardinal de Retz, Saint-Simon); in drama (Corneille); and in political theory (Pascal).

FREN G8417. Pascal Hermeneutics and Rhethoric. 3 pts. Not offered in 2009-2010.

This seminar deals with the connections between hermeneutics and rhetoric in Pascal. We will focus on the notion of Figure, which applies to both fields in a problematic way. We will use ancient hermeneutics and literary theory in order to define Pascal's general theory of interpretation

FREN G8418. The Invention of Classicism. 3 pts. French Neo-Classicism, as seen by its practitioners and its contemporary theoreticians (Corneille, Pascal, Boileau, D'Aubignac), and also by critics from the 18th to the 20th century (Voltaire, Lanson, Bray). Analysis of a few canonical works from the Classical period, in order to arrive at a definition of Classicism that will integrate the descriptive and normative aspects of the notion.

CLFR G8420y. THE HERMENEUTIC TRADITION. 3 pts.

A conceptual and historical study of what it is to read historically, with a focus on the hermeneutic tradition. Authors include Erasmus, Spinoza, Schleiermacher, Droysen, Dilthey, Heidegger, R. G. Collingwood, Gadamer, Habermas, Hayden White, and Paul Ricoeur.

CPLT G8470. Le Drame: Revolutions In French Theater. 3 pts.

This course will study various forms of the drame, an experimental theatrical genre conceived during the Enlightenment and fundamentally transformed by the French Revolution and the Romantic movement. Readings will include plays by Diderot, Mercier, Beaumarchais, Gouges, Sade, Pixerécourt, Hugo, Vigny, Dumas and Musset, in conjunction with theoretical texts in which these authors define the drame as a revolutionary departure form the Classical French tradition.

FREN G8490. Writing Revolution, 1789-1848. 3 pts. This course will study a variety of literary and historiographical responses to the challenge of writing about the revolutionary phenomenon in France. Particular attention will be given to the question of how new literary and historiographical forms were invented, or old ones transformed, in response to this challenge. Readings will include works by Roland, Mercier, Rétif de la Bretonne, Beaumarchais, Sade, Hugo, Chateaubriand, de Staël, Balzac, Stendhal, Sand, Flaubert, Michelet and Tocqueville.

FREN G8516y. Women in/of Disorder. 3 pts.

In this course, we will consider the configuration of various female characters in twentieth century literature of the French-speaking world, focusing specifically on what these characters reveal about the concerns - at once social and aesthetic - that mark the historical and political realities of their creators. Looking at texts from France, West Africa, North Africa, and the Caribbean, we will take note of the manner in which the presentation of "disorderly" women in many ways facilitates the expression of original and subversive discourse. We will explore, for example, the points of intersection between racial and sexual otherness, and examine such phenomena as domestic dissatisfaction, accusatory madness, and unbridled eroticism as fundamentally destabilizing of conventional narrative authority.

FREN G8532. Baudelaire. 3 pts. A close look at Baudelaire's works, with a focus on the scandal of Les Fleurs du mal and its trial.

FREN G8560x. The Idea of Genius C18th - C20th. 3 pts. The idea of genius as it is developed in the modern period; genius as a quality vs genius as the individual; Exemplarity/Pathology

FREN G8587y. Literature and Anthropology in France. 3 pts. A historical study of the relationships between
literature and anthropology in France
throughout the 20th Century, from the birth of Durkheimian sociology
to Barthes' post-structuralism. Authors studied include Lanson, Agathon,
Métraux, Griaule, Leiris, Lévi-Strauss, Blanchot, Bataille, Barthes, and
Clifford.

FREN G8595x. SITUATIONISM. 3 pts.

FREN G8606. Proust, Zion, Sodom. 3 pts. Inquiry into the status of the narrator in the Recherche, his relationship with the protagonist and the author, his possible sexuality and Jewish identity. Close reading of the Recherche with respect to the representation of homosexuality and Jewishness, homophobia, and anti-semitism.

FREN G8615x. Gender and Sexuality in the Maghreb. 3 pts.

This seminar explores questions of gender and sexuality raised in literary works and sociological and historical studies of the Maghreb. The course is conducted in English with readings and films in French and English. Arabic language works are read in English/French translation.

FREN G8618. African Literature and Philosophy. 3 pts.

Negritude: Literature and Philosophy. The movement of Negritude started in the 1930's in Paris by African and Caribbean francophone writers was at once a literary and a philosophical project. The literature of Negritude will then be studied in this seminar as literature and as philosophy.

CLFR G8623. Rhetoric and the Arts In Early Modern France. 3 pts. Team-taught with Professor Hilary Ballon (Art History) Not offered in 2009-2010.

A study of the relationship between literature and the visual arts in France from the Renaissance to the 18th century using the categories of rhetoric in order to develop a more critical understanding of the "Baroque" and the "Classical."

FREN G8624x. Francophone Literature of Lebanon/Syria/Egypt. 3 pts. Readings in French as well as some Arabic/English language literary works and films from Lebanon, Syria, Egypt. Contextual readings in postcolonial theory, and on topics such as war and literature, gender in the Middle East.

FREN G8626. Francophone Literature and Cinema of the Maghreb. 3 pts. Study of key texts, genres and intellectual currents of Maghrebian and 'beur' or immigration literature and cinema from the 1950s to the present. Authors include Yacine, Memmi, Fanon, Dib, Chraïbi, Boudjedra, Djebar, Khatibi, Ben-Jelloun, Tadjer, Mokkadem.

FREN G8629. Multiculturalism in French Literature and Cinema. 3 pts.

FREN G8633x or y. Cinema and Democracy in France.

In this class we will focus on the films of two moments of political crisis--The 1936 Popular Front and May 68--to examine the ways in which (mostly) fictional films ask their spectators to think both about the relation between aesthetics and politics.

CLFR G8670. The Anti-Moderns. 3 pts. From Burke and de Maistre, an inquiry into the counter-revolutionary, anti-progress, frequently catholic, reactionary undercurrent that permeated modernism, and induced its ambivalent aesthetics, up to post-modernism. Modernism and its discontents in Coleridge and Baudelaire, Nietzsche and Renan, Huysmans and Bloy, Bernanos and Celine, T.S. Eliot and Pound, the College of sociology (Bataille and Caillois).

FREN G8690x. The Invention of the Real. 3 pts. A study of how the idea of representing reality in its most sordid aspects developed over the course of the 19th-century, from Stendhal to Zola, with emphasis on the ways in which Zola shaped later conceptions of this evolution by retrospectively framing a genesis of Naturalism. Texts also include works by Balzac, Flaubert, and Maupassant.

FREN G8702. Flaubert.. 3 pts. In French. Flaubert's L'Education Sentimentale with focus on the novel's careful observance of society and its technical and stylistic virtuosity; critical studies since the 1970s; attention given to the history of French thought and the general problems of the romantic aesthetic.

CLFR G8710. Literature Against Representation: Fascinating Fascism. 3 pts. Not offered in 2009-2010.

Fascism's powerful attraction on French writers, from Drieu la Rochelle to Georges Bataille and Céline. But the more fascinated were not always those who explicitly embraced fascism.

CLFR G8711. Literature Against Representation: Céline Express. 3 pts. Not offered in 2009-2010.

Emphasis on later works.

FREN G8715. Intellectual Innovation in Early Modern France. 3 pts. Not offered in 2009-2010.

A study of changing conceptions of "the new" in science, philosophy and literature from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment. Authors include Montaigne, Descartes, Pascal, La Bruyère, Fontenelle, Du Bos, Voltaire.

CLFR G8717. Allegory, Allegorizing, Allegoresis: Ancient and Modern. 3 pts. Not offered in 2009-2010.

History and theory of the levels of meaning in literature. The use of allegory in Greek myths, Biblical parables, typological exegesis, medieval symbolism, and Renaissance emblems. Its revival with Benjamin and de Man. Comparison of the traditional and post-structural notions.

FREN G8719. Narratology: Time and Novel. 3 pts. Not offered in 2009-2010.

Time of the narrative (period, order of events), time of the narration (summaries, scenes, pauses, ellipses). Approach of these topics through examples borrowed from 19th- and 20th-century novels, emphasizing thematic motives and stylistic aspects of human time, remembrance, regret, waiting, dreaming, etc.

CLFR G8730y. Levi-Strauss on trial. 3 pts.

A historical study of some of the main controversies raised by Claude Lévi-Strauss' work, in the anthropological field as well as in the intellectual arena in general, between 1945 and 1970.

FREN G8733. 20th Century French Theater: Texts, Theories, and Productions. 3 pts. Not offered in 2009-2010.

An introduction to major writers, theorists, and directors shaping 20th-century French theater, from Jarry's and Lugné-Poe's 1896 staging of Ubu Roi to Cixous' and Mnouchkine's 1999 Tambours sur la digue. We will read nine plays, paying close attention to the written texts and to the kinds of theater and performances they suggest, as well as to supplementary materials (program notes, illustrations, critical reviews, photos, and videos) documenting actual practices and productions.

FREN G8740. Literature and Immigration. 3 pts.

An exploration of the intersection between France's history of postcolonial immigration and contemporary literary production. Through readings of novels, philosophical essays, and sociological studies we explore the varied and changing ways in which writers have rendered experiences of migration and the status of immigrants and their descendants in French society.

CLFR G8750. Proust & Deleuze : Literature As Philosophy. 3 pts. Not offered in 2009-2010.

CLFR G8760xy. Text and Image: Religious Genres In France and Italy, 1570-1650. 3 pts. Not offered in 2009-2010.

A study of the connections between painting and religious eloquence in France and Italy from 1570 to 1650, with a focus on the Catholic vs. Protestant polemics regarding the use of images in religious practice.

CLFR G8800. People, Masses, Multitudes : From Freud and Reich To Deleuze and Negri. 3 pts. Not offered in 2009-2010.

From Durkheim's notion of the "social" to Freud's "group psychology," Canetti's "masses," and Négri's "multitude," an examination of theories of the "collective band" in sociology, philosophy and literature.

FREN G8800. Travel Literature In 19th- and 20th-Century France (In French). 3 pts. Not offered in 2009-2010.

Travel literature as a genre, in comparison with autobiography and fiction. Hermeneutical problem: interpretation and otherness. The tourist as interpreter. Philosophical tradition: the journey as introspection, cliché and originality. Chateaubriand, Stendhal, Nerval, Morand, Sartre, Butor, Baudrillard.

CLFR G8820x or y. Consuming signs. 3 pts. Not offered in 2009-2010.

FREN G8845x or y. Celine, Artaud: The Quest for Delirium. 3 pts. Not offered in 2009-2010.

FREN G9001-G9004. Research In Stylistics and Poetics. 3 pts.

FREN G9101-G9102. Research In Medieval Literature. 3 pts.

FREN G9201-G9204. Research In French Renaissance Literature. 3 pts.

FREN G9301-G9304. Research In French Baroque and Neo-Classical Literature. 3 pts.

FREN G9401-G9404. Research In French Literature of the Age of the Enlightenment. 3 pts.

FREN G9501-G9504. Research In the Literature of French Romanticism. 3 pts.

FREN G9601-G9604. Research In Modern French Literature From 1885 To WW II.. 3 pts.

FREN S9605-G9608. Research In Contemporary French Writing Since WW II. 3 pts.

FREN G9611-G9614. Research In Modern Poetry From the Time of Baudelaire. 3 pts.

FREN G9701-G9704. Special Studies In French Literature. 3 pts.

FREN G8091x. Proseminar: Introduction to Literary Research.

Designed for first-year graduate students. An introduction to the conceptual and practical tools of literary research.