One of the most luminous architectural images of Louis XIV's court is the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. As an exercise in decorative bluff, it embodies the aspirations of a culture fascinated by strategies of deception, the simultaneous harmonizing and dislocation of one's sense of space and vision. This course will examine some of the consequences of this displacement in a literary culture which too often has been conceived in the strictly neoclassical terms of order and codification. Among the themes and topics to be considered will be court spectacle, man's disorientation and reconciliation in the cosmos, the art of silence and conversation, the strategies and limits of rhetoric, the `je ne sais quoi', the tragic and comic visions, and the portraits of court and bourgeois society. Readings will include selections from the works of Pascal, Boileau, Descartes, La Fontaine, Corneille, Racine, Moliere, Madame de Sevigne, Saint-Simon, La Bruyere, and Fenelon. Conducted in French. Requirements: class participation, three shorter papers, an oral presentation, and an hour-long exam. Prerequisites: French 109, 110, 111 or permission of instructor.