G4203: FR LIT OF THE 16TH CENTURY I:
THE GLOBAL FRENCH RENAISSANCE
Th. 4.10-6.00pm. Milbank 227 (Barnard campus)
Description: This class situates itself at a moment in history just after the discovery of the Americas in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, a moment of growing 'globalization', of increased exchanged also between Europe and the East (esp. the Ottoman empire), to ask how the period's literature captures that outside reality and the epistemological and philosophical concerns that accompany it. We will be asking how key texts 'think' issues such as the oikoumene, human diversity and difference, alterity, foreignness, otherness, national identity, race, etc.). We begin with Rabelais (Pantagruel, Le Quart Livre) and will discuss concepts such as mimesis and the "récit insulaire" (Lestringant) to understand what the comic author 'does' to the Ottoman empire and the New world; we will continue with two writers who, in their very dialogue, mark the first moments in the long tradition of French travel writing and ethnography (Thevet, Léry). Montaigne's Essais will mark the next port of call (cultural relativism, for sure, but what else?). And we will end with three lesser read authors (Du Bartas, Lescarbot, Chrétien des Croix) who, the first in France, bring historical questions of 'globalization' and theoretical concerns about literature's relationship to reality into the 'big' genres (epic and tragedy). We will, as the course develops, make use of various concepts (Foucault on heterotopia, Lévi-Strauss, etc.). At stake, then, is a century of literature which traces how the world 'grew into itself' and how literature 'thought' this moment of change.
Open to graduate students and to qualified undergraduates by permission of the instructor. The course will be taught in French.
Books to purchase*:
-Rabelais, Pantagruel, Paris, Seuil, 1998. ISBN : 978-2020300339
-Rabelais, Le Quart Livre, Paris, Seuil, 1997. ISBN : 978-2020309035
-Foucault, « Le corps utopique » suivi de « Les hétérotopies », Paris, Nouvelles Editions Lignes, 2009. ISBN : 978-2355260339.
-Thevet, Les Singularitez de la France antarctique, éd. Frank Lestringant, Paris, Chandeigne, 2011. ISBN : 978-2915540789
-Léry, Histoire d’un voyage faict en la terre du Brésil, éd. Frank Lestringant, Paris, Le Livre de Poche, coll. « Classiques », 1994. ISBN : 978-2253907077.
-Montaigne, Essais, Paris, Le Livre de Poche, 2002. ISBN : 978-2253132721
Most books can be purchased here (Schoenhof's). Other titles (Foucault and Thevet) can be purchased online directly from France (amazon.fr, etc.).
(*All other texts will be distributed as photocopies in class.)
Course posters: one // two
Open to graduate students and to qualified undergraduates by permission of the instructor. The course will be taught in French.
Books to purchase*:
-Rabelais, Pantagruel, Paris, Seuil, 1998. ISBN : 978-2020300339
-Rabelais, Le Quart Livre, Paris, Seuil, 1997. ISBN : 978-2020309035
-Foucault, « Le corps utopique » suivi de « Les hétérotopies », Paris, Nouvelles Editions Lignes, 2009. ISBN : 978-2355260339.
-Thevet, Les Singularitez de la France antarctique, éd. Frank Lestringant, Paris, Chandeigne, 2011. ISBN : 978-2915540789
-Léry, Histoire d’un voyage faict en la terre du Brésil, éd. Frank Lestringant, Paris, Le Livre de Poche, coll. « Classiques », 1994. ISBN : 978-2253907077.
-Montaigne, Essais, Paris, Le Livre de Poche, 2002. ISBN : 978-2253132721
Most books can be purchased here (Schoenhof's). Other titles (Foucault and Thevet) can be purchased online directly from France (amazon.fr, etc.).
(*All other texts will be distributed as photocopies in class.)
Course posters: one // two