UCL - History of French Literature from 1700 to 1850

[ROM1200]

[45h] 5 credits

This course is taught in the 2d semester.

Teacher(s): Damien Zanone

Language: French

Level: First

Aims
Main themes
Content and teaching methods
Other information (prerequisite, evaluation (assessment methods), course materials recommended readings, ...)

Aims

Knowledge of important works and literary movements, from 1700 to 1850.

Main themes

Chronological approach of the French Literature of this period ; establishing of patterns and markers in the historiography (continuities, filiations, mutations, ruptures) ; relation made to cultural, political, social and religious contexts.

Content and teaching methods

The class will survey one and a half century of literature, from the triumph of Classicism to its deep subversion implied by Romanticism. In between, there is the important period of the Enligtenment which is, in the second half of the 18th Century, a consolidation of Classicism as, in the same time, the moment of its first critics. On the changing background of these aesthetic and intellectuel movements, we will view the masterpieces of the most prominent writers. The life of literature on the long term, will be thought as an indicator of the life of society as a whole: the history of literature will be seized in connection with the broader history of the period.

Other information (prerequisite, evaluation (assessment methods), course materials recommended readings, ...)

The course will proceed by alternating the presentation of large phenomena and that of particular texts. The preliminary reading of at least one work of the main authors of the period is recommended.