RLFR 232(S) Battling for Legitimacy: The Rise of the French Novel in the Eighteenth Century
Widely spread and securely established as a canonical genre today, the novel struggled to gain legitimacy in the eighteenth century. In this course we will examine how French novelists grapple with the novel's clandestine origins, standing up against moralist criticism to create the genre's modern foundations. We will follow the evolution of the French novel from its surreptitious beginnings in the seventeenth century to its early Romantic expressions in the nineteenth century by focusing on the genre's most popular forms, the memoir- and the epistolary novels. Our primary readings will be Lettres portugaises, Abbé Prévost's Manon Lescaut, Crébillon fils' Les Egarements du cour et de l'esprit, Graffigny's Lettres d'une péruvienne, Laclos' Les Liaisons dangereuses, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's Paul et Virginie, and Constant's Adolphe. Secondary readings will be assigned as well. Conducted in French.
Format: seminar. Requirements: active participation in class discussions, several short response papers, two oral presentations, and a final paper.
Prerequisites: French 109, 110, 111 or permission of instructor. Enrollment limit: 20 (expected: 15). Preference given to French and Comparative Literature majors and those with compelling justification for admission.
Hour: TANAKA