FRENCH LITERATURE 2

French Literature 2 is one of the teachings that characterizes the literary-cultural path of the Degree Course in Languages, Civilizations and Language Sciences. It allows students to acquire knowledge of the literary and cultural heritage of France in the 18th and 19th centuries; it develops skills in the thematic and formal analysis of literary texts; it focuses on how they respond to the fundamental questions of their time.
Training objectives:
The course aims to provide a general knowledge of the literary production of the eighteenth and nineteenth century French, with particular regard to criteria of periodization, movement and current, as well as the constitution of literary genres. It also aims to develop the capacity for logical and chronological comparison between the works and understanding of phenomena linked to the evolution of genres, through appropriate critical and methodological tools.
Through reading and analysis of selected passages, he intends to develop understanding and analysis skills of literary discourse.
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1. Knowledge and understanding
Knowledge of the history of the French novel and poetry, as well as the historical-cultural context of the period in question (18th and 19th centuries). Understanding of anthological literary texts in French.
2. Applying knowledge and understanding
Ability to read, understand, analyse and locate narrative and poetic texts in their respective contexts.
3. Judging skills
Ability to assess the thematic and formal implications of the texts and to link them to the historical and literary context in which they have developed.
4. Communication skills
Ability to expose the subject and problems of the course with a wealth of logic and timeline, clarity and terminological precision.
5. Learning Capabilities
Ability to synthesize, link, sort shapes and data.
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Knowledge of the subjects acquired in basic literary subjects during the first year of the degree course in Languages, civilizations and language sciences.
French is required to be proficient at level B1 of the ERQ, and is mainly intended to read and understand the literary texts of the programme.
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History of French literature (18th-19th centuries)

The course aims to cover issues concerning the Enlightenment century novel and 19th century poetry. The first part of the course (30 hours) will study the major narrative articulations of the eighteenth-century novel (roman d'aventures, roman mémoire, roman épistolaire) as well as the goals of individual authors; the relationships between works, society and morality will also be addressed. The second part (30 hours) will be devoted to the study of the main poetics of the nineteenth century, from Romanticism to Symbolism, with emphasis on thematic, formal and structural issues. The reading and analysis of excerpts selected in the course of the lectures will be accompanied by individual readings of relevant works in French literary history.

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1. Readings
From :

A. The novel of the eighteenth century
Lesage, Le Diable boiteux, 1707
Marivaux, La Vie de Marianne ou les aventures de Madame la comtesse de *** , 1731-1742
Abbé Prévost, Histoire du chevalier Des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut, 1731
Laclos, Les Liaisons dangereuses, 1782

B. Nineteenth century poetry

Lamartine, Méditations poétiques, 1820
Hugo, Les Orientales, 1829
Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du mal, 1857, 1861

2. Institutional part
Study of the broad lines of literary history in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in the following manuals:

Storia europea della letteratura francese, a cura di Lionello Sozzi, t. 2: Dal Settecento all’età contemporanea, Torino, Einaudi, coll. “Piccola biblioteca Einaudi”, 2013 (limited to the 18th and 19th centuries).

or:

La civiltà letteraria francese del Settecento, a cura di Gianni Iotti, Bari, Laterza, coll. Istituzioni di letteratura francese, 2009.
Il romanzo francese dell’Ottocento, a cura di Anna Maria Scaiola, Bari, Laterza, coll. Istituzioni di letteratura francese, 2008.
La poesia francese 1814-1914, a cura di Luca Pietromarchi, Bari, Laterza, coll. Istituzioni di letteratura francese, 2012.

To be consulted :

Jean Erhard et René Pomeau, Histoire de la littérature française : de Fénelon à Voltaire, nouvelle éd. révisée, Paris, GF-Flammarion, 1999.
Michel Delon, Robert Mauzy et Sylvain Menant, Histoire de la littérature française : de l’ « Encyclopédie » aux « Méditations », nouvelle éd. révisée, Paris, GF-Flammarion, 1999.
Max Milner et Claude Pichois, Histoire de la littérature française: de Chateaubriand à Baudelaire, nouvelle éd. révisée, Paris, GF-Flammarion, 1996.
Michel Décaudin et Daniel Leuwers, Histoire de la littérature française: de Zola à Guillaume Apollinaire, nouvelle éd. révisée, Paris, GF-Flammarion, 1996.

In-depth study:

A. The novel of the eighteenth century

Françoise Barguillet, Le Roman au XVIIIe siècle , Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, « Littératures », 1981.
Jean-Paul Sermain, Le Roman jusqu’à la Révolution française, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, « Licence Lettres », 2011.

B. Nineteenth century poetry

Jean-Pierre Bertrand et Pascal Durand, La Modernité romantique. De Lamartine à Nerval, Bruxelles, Les Impressions nouvelles, « Réflexions faites », 2006.
Jean-Pierre Bertrand et Pascal Durand, Les Poètes de la modernité. De Baudelaire à Apollinaire, Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 2006.

Further bibliographical references will be provided during the course.

The exam consists of an oral interview, part in Italian and part in French, which will take on the contents developed during the lessons, as well as on the institutional part concerning the literary history of the period in question. The students will be tested for their knowledge of the works studied in the literary and historical context of reference, their ability to analyse a piece studied during the course and their in-depth knowledge of six works, in French, to be read and presented independently:
two novels chosen from among the texts in the programme (novels of the eighteenth century)
two novels freely chosen from the works of Balzac, Stendhal, Flaubert, Goncourt, Zola, Huysmans.
two collections of poems chosen from among the texts in the programme (nineteenth-century poetry). For each collection the student will prepare five poems of his choice according to the modalities developed during the course (comprehension/translation, metrics, thematic and formal analysis).
Particular attention will be paid to the clarity of the exhibition, the logical and chronological structure of the speech, the historical location of the works and authors studied.
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Lessons in Italian and French

Italian

oral