FRENCH LITERATURE

This module is especially intended for students enrolled in the LLEAP Master’s degree of the French Studies pathway, but it can also be usefully taken as a free-choice area subject by students of postcolonial (Anglophone or Spanish-speaking) literatures of the other pathways and of the SL Master’s degree.
Through a course structured in graded educational stages, the student will be enabled to deal with complex literary and critical texts in French (to read, analyze, interpret and situate them in their respective historical and cultural contexts) and to master techniques related to literary studies and textual analysis (philology, genre history, poetics, rhetoric, hermeneutics, stylistics, reception, theoretical-literary terminology).

In general, the course aims to introduce students to Francophone literatures.
Through the examination – exemplified in the texts – of issues essential to those cultures, the aim is for students to acquire the ability to understand the covered texts and to discuss them critically.

Good knowledge of the French language, especially in terms of ability to understand academic oral communication (classes are in French) and written text (all study materials are in French).
Required language level: minimum B2, but C1 recommended.

This course will explore the close links between Surrealism and the complex and plural "negritude" movement. In addition to their own poetics, we'll be looking at the reciprocal impact of the two movements, the mutual attraction between their theoretical proposals and their formal application, and their shared denunciation of French colonial policy. We'll be paying particular attention to the exchanges between Césaire and Breton, Damas and Desnos, as well as to the review Légitime défense and the construction of the collection "Martinique, charmeuse de serpents".

Ce cours entend approfondir le lien étroit qui lie le surréalisme au mouvement – complexe et pluriel – de la « négritude ». Outre leur poétique propre, il s’agira de saisir la réciproque incidence de l’un et de l’autre, l’attraction mutuelle unissant les propositions théoriques des uns et leur application formelle, mais aussi leur commune dénonciation de la politique coloniale française. Nous serons particulièrement attentifs aux échanges entre Césaire et Breton, Damas et Desnos, mais aussi à la revue Légitime défense et à la construction du recueil "Martinique, charmeuse de serpents".

Main texts
- André Breton, Manifeste du surréalisme, 1924
- André Breton, Martinique, charmeuse de serpents, 1948
- Aimé Césaire, Les Armes miraculeuses [1946], Paris, Gallimard, 1970.
- Aimé Césaire, Cahier d’un retour au pays natal [1939-1947], Paris, Présence africaine, 2000.
- Aimé Césaire, Discours sur le colonialisme, suivi de Discours sur la négritude, Paris, Présence africaine, 2000.
- Suzanne Césaire, Le Grand camouflage : Écrits de dissidence (1941-1945), Paris, Seuil, 2015.
- Léon-Gontran Damas, Black-Label et autres poèmes, Paris, Gallimard, 2015.
- Léon-Gontran Damas, Poètes d’expression française [d’Afrique Noire, Madagascar, Réunion, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Indochine, Guyane] 1900–1945, Paris, Seuil, 1947.

Secondary readings

- Stanislas Spero Adotevi, Négritude et négrologues, Editions Materia Scritta, 2017.
- Vincent Debaene, « Les écrivains contre l’ethnologie ? Ethnographie, ethno- logie et littérature d’Afrique et des Antilles, 1921-1948 », Romanic Review, vol. 104, no 3-4, 2013, p. 353-374.
- Souleymane Bachir Diagne, « Négritude », Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, URL :
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/negritude/
- M. B. Diop, Le Destin de la négritude, Paris, Les Editions de la Lune, 2010.
- Brent Edwards, The Practice of Diaspora: Literature, Translation, and the Rise of Black Internationalism, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2003.
- Frantz Fanon, “Antillais et Africains”, Esprit, n°23, 1955, p. 261-69.
- Frantz Fanon, Peau noire, masques blancs [1952], Paris, Seuil, 2015.
- Sébastien Heiniger, Décolonisation, fédéralisme et poésie chez Léopold Sédar Senghor, Paris, Classiques Garnier, 2022.
- Jean Khalfa, « Naissance de la négritude », Les Temps Modernes, vol. 656, no 5, 2009, p. 38-63.
- Jean Khalfa, « Deux néologismes de Césaire », dans Fabula-LhT, n° 12, « La Langue française n’est pas la langue française », dir. Samia Kassab et Myriam Suchet, mai 2014, URL: http://www.fabula.org/lht/12/khalfa.html .
- Lilyan Kesteloot, Négritude et la situation coloniale, Clé, Yaoundé, 1968.
- Lilyan Kesteloot, Césaire et Senghor. Un pont sur l’Atlantique, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2006.
- Christopher L. Miller, “The (Revised) Birth of Negritude: Communist Revolution and ‘the Immanent Negro’ in 1935”, PMLA, vol. 125, n° 3, May 2010, p. 743-749.
- Raisa Rexer, “Black and White and Re(a)d All Over: L'Étudiant noir, Communism, and the Birth of Négritude”, Research in African Literature, vol. 44, n°4, 2013, p. 1-14.

Additional bibliographical information will be provided during the course. Online books will be available on the course Moodle.

The exam is oral and is conducted in French.
The exam begins with a topic of the student’s choice, among those inherent to the exam program (or with an in-depth study agreed upon with the lecturer).
It will ascertain the student’s ability to critically comment the texts by situating them in the historical-cultural framework proper to Francophone literatures: on the one hand, noting and explaining the peculiarities, intrinsic and contextual of the texts examined, and on the other hand, showing an adequate knowledge and understanding of the historical-cultural reality of these literatures in their becoming, with regard to that part of them specifically covered in class or indicated in the examination program.

Frontal lectures in French will be enriched by moments of exchange and shared reflection with students, on the topics covered. All teaching materials (texts and in-depth studies) uploaded during the course on the Moodle platform will be subject of study and their knowledge will be verified at the exam.

More details and additional critical bibliography will be provided in class. The literary corpus analyzed will consist of the main texts mentioned above and a selection of passages indicated in the syllabus or provided by the lecturer.
Lectures will be given in French.
Students who wish to apply for the thesis in Francophone literatures are required, if they have not done so previously, to take the “History of the Culture of Francophone Countries” exam of the three-year course of study (also possible as a free-choice exam).

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