30073 - Literature of the French-Speaking Countries 1 (LM)

Academic Year 2018/2019

  • Docente: Anna Soncini
  • Credits: 9
  • SSD: L-LIN/03
  • Language: French

Learning outcomes

The student will learn the history and the development of the extra-European francophone literatures thoroughly, and in particular the relationship between the literary texts and the historical, artistic and linguistic context. He will know and use the practical methodologies for the analysis and interpretation of a literary text.

Course contents

The Other and his look. Who is the Other? How to approach it? The course aims to analyze works featuring characters who, coming to Europe or from Europe to other countries, offer their thoughts. Their eyes offer us, at a time when the relationship with the Other has become a constant element of our daily lives, the possibility of reflecting on imaginary facts that often reproduce real situations. It could be a way of looking at differences to understand and to respect the Other.

 

Readings/Bibliography

Proposed novels:

Loucie Cousturier, Des inconnus chez moi, Paris, éditions de la sirène, 1920

René Maran, Batouala (1921), Magnard, 2002

André Gide, Voyage au Congo (1927), Paris, Poche, 1995

Georges Simenon, Coup de lune (1933), Omnibus 2012

Henri Michaux, Un barbare en Asie (1933), Gallimard, 1986

Jean-Paul Sartre, Orphée noir (1948), préface, in L. S. Senghor, Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache de langue française, PUF, 1997

Cheikh Hamidou Kane, L’aventure ambiguë (1952 – 1961), Paris, 10/18, 2003

Ferdinand Oyono, Le vieux nègre et la médaille (1956), Paris, 10/18, 2006

Mariama Ba, Un chant écarlate, Dakar, Nouvelles éditions Africaines, 1981 (en bibliothèque)

Marco Micone, Gens du silence, Guernica Editions, Spring 1991

Andrei Makine, Le testament français, Paris, Mercure de France, 1995

Agotha Kristoff, L’analphabète, éditions Zoe, 2004;

Eugène Mattiato La légion du sous-sol, Bruxelles, Espace nord, 2005

Marie Ndiaye, Trois femmes puissantes, Paris, Gallimard, 2009

Fatou Diome, Marianne porte plainte, Paris, Flammarion, 2017

Critical texts :

Lilyan Kesteloot, Histoire de la littérature négro-africaine. Paris, Karthala, 2001

Romuald Fonkoua et Pierre Halen, Les Champs littéraires africains, Paris, Karthala, 2001

Pierre Nepveu, L'écologie du réel : mort et naissance de la littérature québécoise contemporaine, Boréal (1988), 1999

Marc Quaghebeur, Histoire Forme et Sens en Littérature. La Belgique francophone, Tome 2 (1914 – 1944) Peter Lang, 2017


Teaching methods

The course is organised in collaboration (if possible) with francophonian professors.

It will focus on the textual analysis and the literary history.

Assessment methods

The assessment consist in an oral examination of everything that has been proposed in class. Will be evaluated the critical and methodological capacities of the student, who must offer his own analytical reading of 4 novels of his choice among the novels proposed during the course. The student must demonstrate his own ability to read and analyze a text by interacting with the issues and theoretical texts proposed in class. A broad view of the problem, linked to a specific ability to analyze texts, the demonstration of a good knowledge of the French language are appreciated. The flat and repetitive knowledge of the work, an incorrect language leads to an average evaluation. With large gaps or insufficient knowledge of the language the oral exam is assessed negatively.

The "non-attending" student must also provide an analysis of four literary works and the study of one of the essays proposed in Bibliography, as well as the reading of Jean-Louis Joubert, Les voleurs de la langue. Traversée de la francophonie littéraire, Paris, Philippe Rey, 2006.

Office hours

See the website of Anna Soncini