29065 - European Francophone Literatures (1) (2nd cycle)

Learning outcomes

At the end of the course the student is brought to the awareness of the importance of French language literatures in the European tradition and of the dialectic with the European tradition by the French-speaking literatures scattered throughout the world. The student is invited to deepen an identity vision of each of the studied literatures and an anthropological vision of the common elements in the various cultural areas in which the French-speaking literatures are.

Course contents

War and the relationship to the other.

During the course we will analyze the way in which writers staged the relationship to the other during and after a war (in the 20th and 21st centuries). Alongside the analysis of the proposed novels, the course look at the critical thinking of writers who influenced the twentieth century, such as Valéry, Camus, Sartre, Semprùn.

The course will be held in French.

Readings/Bibliography

The program includes the analysis of the following novels, divided into points that seem to characterize the evolution of thought in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries:

1. The Misunderstanding : Maurice Maeterlinck, Le bourgmestre de Stilmonde, on the web, 1919
2. The silence : Georges Simenon, Les gens d’en face, Fayard, 1933, Le silence de la mer, Paris, Les éditions de minuit, 1942
3. To overcome pain : Marguerite Duras, Hiroshima, mon amour, 1959/60 ;
4. Try to understand :
   1. Adolphe Nysenholc, L’enfant à l’ombre, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2007
   2. David Diop, Frere d’ame, Paris, Seuil, 2018
5. Becoming homeless : Scholastique Mukasonga, Un si beau diplôme !, Paris, Gallimard, 2020

 

Texts to support the analysis :

•Paul Valéry, La crise de l’esprit, Edition Manucius, 2016 (1919)

•Pourquoi la guerre ? Sigmund Freud écrit à Albert Einstein https://fr.unesco.org [https://fr.unesco.org/]

•Albert Camus, Lettres à un ami allemand (1943 – 1944), in https://montaiguvendee.fr/cms/uploads/pdf/Bibliotheque/Camus/Camus_Lettres_ami_allemand.pdf

•Jean-Paul Sartre, Qu’est-ce la littérature? 1947, en 1948 à l’intérieur de Situations II (Paris, Gallimard)

•Jorge Semprun, L’écriture ou la vie, 1994

Teaching methods

During the course, students will be asked to actively participate, presenting themselves the works in the program and then proceeding to a collective analysis.

Assessment methods

The assessment is made on the basis of an oral exam of what is proposed during the course. The critical and methodological skills of the student are evaluated, who must also propose his own analysis of the texts. It is important that the student is able to demonstrate his / her ability to read and analyze a text by making it interact with the problems and theoretical texts proposed during the course. A broad vision of the problems, linked to a good ability of textual analysis and the demonstration of a good knowledge of the French language will be appreciated. The flat and repetitive knowledge of the work, a not very correct knowledge of the language lead to an average evaluation. Large gaps and poor knowledge of the language lead to a negative evaluation.

Teaching tools

For some novels  the analysis with computer supports (Sketch Engine; Ant-conc ....) will be used.

Office hours

See the website of Anna Soncini