27464 - French Culture and Literature LM

Course contents

Language- Culture, Literatures: the French language in the World

 

The course aims at tackling some aspects of the specificity of the language- culture and of the literature in its extension outside the frontiers of France, that is to say to this dimension that has been named “francophonie”, which found its full expression in literature. Today, with these same writers, the cultural debate is tending to contest this wording that carries a linguistic- cultural dependency and seems to orientate itself towards the expression “Literatures- world of French language”.

            Starting from literary texts and essays from Francophone writers, some arguments will be confronted and analysed: historic-cultural ones (from colonialism to post-colonialism to immigration), linguistic-cultural ones  (bilingualism, the Creole phenomenon, national language/ official language, dominant language/ minor language) and literary ones (writers who express themselves in French that stems from an oral tradition, or those who chose the auto-translation…)

            The texts, focus and aim of study, will render evident how these writers (E. Glissant, L.Senghor, N. Huston, J. Kristeva, A. Moi...)  who have opted for the French language, have in fact faced creative problems caused by their own choice_ the way these choices have often generated processes of introspection, pains and emotions that are directly reflected inside their literary creation.

Readings/Bibliography

A dossier on introductive readings can be found in the copy-room “Carta-carbone”.

The bibliography and the assessment methods will be communicated at the beginning of the course.

Office hours

See the website of Daniele Emmanuele Di Gaetano