History of French Literature from 1700 to 1850 [ LROM1200 ]

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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.

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

The evaluation will proceed in a three hours examination (June or September).

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.

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.

Compulsory readings:
- Prévost, Manon Lescaut (sous le titre Histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut, Le Livre de Poche)
- Marivaux, Le Jeu de l'amour et du hasard (GF) ; La Dispute (Librio)
- Voltaire, L'Ingénu (GF)
- Laclos, Les Liaisons dangereuses (Folio)
- Rousseau, Rêveries du promeneur solitaire (GF)
- Staël, Dix années d'exil (Rivages poche)
- Chateaubriand, Atala. René (en un même volume, Livre de Poche)
- Constant, Adolphe (GF)
- Hugo, Les Orientales (Livre de Poche) ; Lucrèce Borgia (Folio)
- Stendhal, Chroniques italiennes (GF)
- Balzac, Le Père Goriot (Livre de Poche)
- Sand, « Lavinia » (nouvelle en ligne sur Gallica : http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k5725124j/f280.image.r=sand+lavinia.langFR)
- Nerval, Les Filles du feu (Folio)

History of literature recommended:
- Histoire de la littérature française. De Fénelon à Voltaire, par René Pomeau et Jean Ehrard, Paris, GF-Flammarion, 1999.
- Histoire de la littérature française. De l'Encyclopédie aux Méditations, par Michel Delon, Robert Mauzi et Sylvain Menant, Paris, GF-Flammarion, 1999.
- Histoire de la littérature française. De Chateaubriand à Baudelaire, par Max Milner et Claude Pichois, Paris, GF-Flammarion, 1999.

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