Courses

All courses carry 3 credits unless otherwise specified.

511 Introduction to Medieval French Studies
An opportunity to master the fundamentals of Old French in such a way as to enhance the pleasure of discovering a new language and learning to read and enjoy the many literary masterpieces that illustrate it. D. Maddox

564 Literature of Africa and the Caribbean
Cultural colonization and decolonization, the Negritude movement, contemporary writing in francophone West Africa, Haiti, and the French West Indies.

584 French Canadian Literature
Canadian poets, novelists, and dramatists writing in French.

601 Literary Movements

615 Literary Aspects of Medieval Courtly Culture (2nd sem)
Organized around a specific problem or theme; study of selected lyric texts, brief narratives, and courtly romances. Covers the Tristan legend, Chrétien de Troyes, and the Vulgate Cycle. Texts available in medieval French and modern French translations. D. Maddox

617 Medieval Representations of Selfhood and Society (1st sem)
Cross-generic studies of medieval institutions and attitudes in the epic chansons de geste, the Roman de la Rose, fabliaux, chronicles, and dramatic works. Emphasis on cultural perspectives and contemporary critical issues. D. Maddox

619 Medieval Drama (1st sem)
D. Maddox

624 Renaissance Prose
Selected texts by François Rabelais and Michel de Montaigne. Baillargeon

627 Renaissance Poetry
Representative poets of the 16th century. Attention to the Petrarchan tradition; the Pléiade; women poets. Baillargeon

629 French Theater from the Renaissance to the Classical Age
Major trends and representative plays of the period.

631 17th-Century Comic Vision
A cross-generic study of the representation of the writer at work and the interrelationship between literature and society in Molière’s time. Emphasis on works by Molière, La Fontaine, Bussy-Rabutin, Mme de Sévigné.

632 17th-Century Tragic Vision

634 17th-Century Philosophers and Moralists
The writers most important in classical thought, especially Descartes, Pascal, and LaRochefoucauld.

644/645 18th-Century Literature I, II
Variable topics, including chief writers and thinkers of the Age of Enlightenment; the satirical novel and the sentimental novel, and readings in the French theater from LeSage to Beaumarchais.

656 19th-Century Realist and Naturalist Novel
Focus on the works on Flaubert, Zola, Maupassant, etc.

657/658 19th-Century Poetry I, II
Variable topics. Focus on major figures from the romantic movement through symbolism.

665/666 The Contemporary Novel
Readings in the novel of social concern, the novel of personal and aesthetic concern, and the novel concerned with the human condition, tradition, and innovation.

667/668 Contemporary French Poetry I, II
Variable topics; major French poets from the turn of the century to surrealism and from surrealism to the present. Sears

669 20th-Century Theater
Major currents of modern French theater from symbolism to theater of the absurd as seen in representative plays. Sears

670 Expository Prose(1st sem)
Practice in the skills of expository writing in French through the composition of frequent short essays on a range of literary and intellectual topics.

671 Graduate Reading Course
Lamb

681 Issues in Contemporary French Civilization (2nd sem)

683 Textual and Literary Analysis
Combines theory and practice. Explores the potential for textual analysis based on literary texts from several different periods and genres, and in relation to a number of contemporary theoretical perspectives: feminism; Marxism, postcolonial studies; psychoanalysis; reader-response and reception theory; structuralist poetics and semiotics. Of particular interest to graduate students in the humanities and social sciences.

695 Culture and Marginality in Early Modern Europe
Study of the myths, mentalities, and popular traditions that thrived on the margins of Renaissance culture, using concepts in economics, ethnography, linguistics, psychoanalysis, and literary theory. Topics include witchcraft, popular cosmology, heresy, obscure private lives, and the “carnivalesque.” Taught in English. D. Maddox

697 Colette, DeBeauvoir, Duras
Study of three major 20th-century French women writers. Topics include autobiography, mother-daughter relationships, aging, and political engagement. Sears

697R Le recit d’ enfrance
Bouvier

699 Master’s Thesis
Credit, 6.

771 History of the French Language
The French language from the Middle Ages to the present. Fundamentals of early French; dialects; popular idioms; the emergence of Modern French; French in the Francophone world; theories of language change; currents in French linguistics; today’s French in politics, commerce, and the media. D. Maddox

780 Bibliography and Methods of Literary Research
Required of candidates for the Ph.D.

791, 792, 793, 794, 795 Seminar
Credit, 1-3.

801 Contemporary French Literary Theory

809 Genre Course—Theatre
French and Francophone theater from medieval drama to today. Wide ranges of theatrical approaches. Theater as a social commentary; relationships between theater and religion, political movements, postcolonialism, and questions of race and gender.

891, 892, 893, 894, 895 Seminar
Credit, 1-3.

897 Seminar in Rousseau and the Enlightenment
Mensah

899 Doctoral Dissertation
Credit, 18.

 

Courses in Preparation for Teaching

571 Applied Linguistics(French)
French linguistics applied to teaching of French in secondary schools.

572 Methods of Teaching Foreign Languages (1st sem)
Practice-oriented introduction; includes English. Various aspects of teaching the first level of all languages from elementary school through university. Prerequisites: senior status, fluency in teaching language and consent of instructor.

573 Advanced Methods of Teaching Foreign Languages (2nd sem)
Practice-oriented; includes English as a Foreign Language. For advanced undergraduates, graduate students and practicing foreign language teachers. Methods of teaching foreign languages at intermediate and advanced levels. Focus on preparation of teaching materials. Prerequisite: fluency in the teaching language. FRENCHED 572 useful but not necessary.

672 Teaching Assistant Workshop I
Training of new teaching assistants in techniques of the teaching of French. Credit, 2. 

697 Practicum in French and Francophone Literature and Civilization
Approaches to teaching literature and culture on the high school level, working with the Advanced Placement reading list and intermediate-level works. Sears

698 M.A.T. Teaching Practicum

774 Foreign Language Research
Recent research studies in foreign language education.

 

Italian Studies

507 Dante and the Duecento
Selections from the works of Dante and his contemporaries; intensive study of the Divine Comedy. 

514 Prehumanism and the Early Renaissance (2nd sem)
Literature of the 14th and 15th centuries; Petrarca, Boccaccio, Poliziano, Lorenzo de Medici, Michelangelo.

524 The High Renaissance
Literature of the late 15th and 16th centuries; Machiavelli, Castiglione, Ariosto, Tasso.

554 Neoclassicism and Romanticism
The works of Foscolo, Leopardi, and Manzoni.

555 19th-Century Novel
Development of the novel from Verga to Svevo.

559 19th-Century Theater
Italian theater from Verga to the present.

564 Pirandello and Theatricality
Theoretical readings on “theatricality,” from Freud, Benjamin, Kafka, Lacan, and Derrida used to deconstruct representation in terms of ‘repetition’. The divide between reality and illusion and madness and sanity as the fundamental deictic dilemma of Pirandello’s pathbreaking play, Six Characters in Search of an Author. Focus on its key issues in order to understand the challenges of “Pirandellian” writers Primo Levi and Antonio Tabucchi. How these writers demonstrate the impossibility of showing life’s miscellany.

565 20th-Century Novel
Development of the novel from Pirandello to the present.

567 Modern Poetry
Selected Italian poetry of the modern age.

569 20th-Century Theater
Development of the Italian theater from the early grottesco to the present. Chiarelli, D’Annunzio, Pirandello and the theater of the absurd, Betti, De Filippo and others.