Questions of Literary History [ LROM2720 ]

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Literary history is a critical construction, ever shifting, which tells us just as much about the context in which it is produced as the periods to which it refers: discourse which brings together past and present.
The course invites students to become aware of this phenomenon by discovering the principles and elements involved in the construction of this discourse.
Each year, a specific subject is chosen (an aspect of literary life, the development of a genre or a theme), which provides the main topic for study.

By the end of the course, students should be able to:

-         set discourse on literature in a historical context and know how to recognise the principles they employ. To identify accounts of literary history as examples of built discourse.
-         establish a link between literature theory (view of the the phenomenon of literature in general) and critique (view of individual works).
-         set literary studies in the context of social sciences.
-         produce a critique of the critique : to treat accounts of literary history as structures for analysis ; to highlight the strategies employed by different forms of criticism.

The course will start by a presentation of its theoretical question before thinking of it through the study of particular texts.

The title of the course is 'The novel, real and ideal, in the 19^th century'. We readily talk about a reshaping of the genre of the novel in France from Balzac and his decision to show and even study contemporary society. The novel is thus caught in a twin conflict between being faithful to what is real, through a systematic exploration of what is (with descriptions, for example) and serving an ideal through what should be  (with, for example, plot lines designed to highlight and contrast moral qualities). The tension between real and ideal shapes 19^th century novel writing to such an extent that it becomes a major theme of this literary genre. The course attempts to understand and illustrate this.

The main works studied will be the following :

- Balzac, Honoré de : Illusions perdues, éd. Ph. Berthier, Paris, GF-Flammarion, 2010.

- Flaubert Gustave : Madame Bovary, éd. J. Neefs, Paris, Le Livre de Poche, 1999.

- Sand, George : Le Compagnon du Tour de France, éd. J.-L. Cabanès, Paris, Le Livre de Poche, 2004.

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