RLFR 214(S) Travels, Topographies, Curiosities and Encounters: The Renaissance Sense of Place

Renaissance thinkers and writers are fascinated with the past as a living, spatial register and with the future as a construct of the imagination. Through the study of representative French Renaissance texts centered on travel, exploration, and inquiry, this course will explore the way in which sixteenth-century writers approach discovery as a mode of recognition that helps authenticate and define our sense of place. For the Renaissance this sense is shaped from a variety of sources prompting writers to return to the major Greek and Latin travel epics (The Odyssey and The Aeneid), to rewrite these epic journeys as phantasmagoric quests and figures of poetic aspiration, and to establish the relevancy of the past for helping Europe come to terms with the dislocating discovery of the "New World." We shall focus on Francois Rabelais's Tiers livre and Quart livre, Joachim Du Bellay's archeological and Odyssean sonnets in Les Antiquitez and Les Regrets, and Michel de Montaigne's Essays. Conducted in French. Requirements: class participation, two papers, an oral presentation, and a one-hour exam. Prerequisite: French 109, 110, or 112, or permission of the instructor.

Hour:  NORTON