Aims

By the end of this course, students should be able to:
- interpret a short text with a high density of semantic and aesthetic content (as is typical of modern poetic texts)
- understand the conditions necessary for a thorough text reading and be able to analyse and evaluate their own text reading strategies
- situate the stylistic and aesthetic approaches adopted by the modern poets
- write a poetic analysis

Main themes

This seminar adopts a theoretical and aesthetic approach to the analysis of 19th and 20th century poetic texts.
From a theoretical angle, the seminar examines the act of interpretation, arguing that it is a competence to be acquired and which develops over time, which can be evaluated and examined from a theoretical viewpoint. In particular, the course will address the question of reading models, the decisions that weigh on the reader and the reader-text relation.
The aesthetic perspective takes in the major issues confronting modern poets and attempts to identify the way in which each poet has dealt with these issues.

Content and teaching methods

This seminar is open to a maximum of 20 students who will work together on a number of 19th and 20th century poetic texts.
An inductive and reflective methodological approach is adopted: it is by evaluating students' own interpretative processes and, where applicable, those of specialists who have published analyses of the texts under investigation, that the theoretical and aesthetic issues laid out in the course description are gradually laid bare and resolved.
This critical distancing should lead the participants to put forward a global text reading, which takes every detail of the text into account (semantics, lexis, rhythm, sound, rhetoric etc.) and to identify the singularity of the author's style (form and meaning being considered as indivisible).
Each text studied will lead to the production of a formalized analysis, written by a group of students. This analysis will summarise the seminar findings for the particular text and will enable students to define the challenges of writing an analysis of this type.

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

Course entry requirements: Explanatory course on Modern French Author.

Other credits in programs