FRENCH LITERATURE 2

The class of "Littérature française" is one of the main teachings of the French course of the Master Degree Course in European, American and post-colonial languages and literatures. It allows students to acquire an advanced knowledge of the history of French literature as well as mastery of theoretical-critical methodologies.
Teaching objectives:
Through a course structured in graduated training stages, students will be able to deal with complex literary and critical texts in French (to read, analyze, interpret and place them in their respective historical-cultural contexts) and to master the techniques related to literary studies and textual analysis (philology, history of genres, poetry, rhetoric, hermeneutics, stylistics, reception, theoretical-literary terminology
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1. Knowledge and understanding
Knowledge of the historical and cultural context covered by the program ; knowledge of the history of classical and modern French poetics; knowledge of applied criticism.
2. Ability to apply knowledge and understanding
Ability to read, understand, analyze, interpret and situate in their respective historical-cultural contexts ancient and modern critical texts.
3. Ability to make judgments
Ability to evaluate different approaches, methods and interpretations of the texts under consideration; ability to exercise critical spirit and analytical skills; ability to navigate among different critical perspectives.
4. Communication skills
Ability to expound problems and analyses concerning the subject program with logical and chronological rigor, and to express concepts with clarity and terminological precision.
5. Learning skills
Ability to synthesize, connect, order, convey ideas, forms and data.

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Knowledge of the general frameworks of the history of modern French literature acquired through the basic literary teachings of the three-year degree course in Languages, civilizations and language sciences.
Since the course is given in French, a mastery of the French language (written and oral) is required at level C1 of the CEFR, also in view of the examination.

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Masks of marginality: figures and themes of the poetic curse

From the end of the 18th to the end of the 19th centuries, a figure of the artist at odds with society emerged: first suffered, then claimed as such, marginality is as much a manifestation of withdrawal into oneself as an awareness of the singularity of art. In its various guises - the sick person, the neurasthenic, the rebel, the clown, the bohemian, the beggar, the destitute - this figure is reflected in the life of the "outcast" artist and in his or her texts, the fruit of an artistic bias that is distant from social propriety and literary convention. This distance, not without a certain disdain, gradually crystallized into the myth of the "cursed poet".
Our course will examine the ins and outs of the "literary curse" in its various articulations: from the posture assumed by the poet to the expression of the margins in his works, and his conflicting relationship with the Republic of Letters and the readership. We'll take a closer look at the notions of rupture, originality and autonomy in the practice of modern literature, and consider their implications for contemporary debate.

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SOURCES PRIMAIRES

Gilbert, Le Génie aux prises avec la fortune, ou le poète malheureux (1772)
Alfred de Vigny, Stello (1832)
Petrus Borel, Madame Putiphar (1839)
Baudelaire, « Edgar Allan Poe : sa vie et ses ouvrages » (1852)
Théodore de Banville, Odes funambulesques (1857) « « Le Saut du tremplin »
Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du mal : « Le Guignon » (1855) « Bohémiens en voyage » (1857)
Albert Glatigny, Les Vigne folles (1860) : « Les Bohémiens »
Baudelaire, Le Spleen de Paris : « Le Vieux Saltimbanque » (1861), « Une mort héroïque » (1863)
Mallarmé, Poésies « Le Guignon » (1862, 1883), « Le Tombeau d’Egard Poe » (1877)
Verlaine, Poèmes saturniens (1866) : « Les sages d’autrefois… »
Verlaine, Jadis et naguère : « Le Clown » (1867), « Le Pitre » (1869)
Verlaine, Les Poètes maudits (1884, 1888)
Tristan Corbière, Les Amours jaunes (1873) : « Le Poète contumace »

SOURCES SECONDAIRES

Brissette Pascal, La Malédiction littéraire. Du poète crotté au génie malheureux, Presses de l'Université de Montréal, « Socius », Montréal, 2005.
Brissette Pascal, « Poète malheureux, poète maudit, malédiction littéraire. Hypothèses de recherche sur les origines d’un mythe », Contextes, mai 2008.
Brissette Pascal et M.-P. Luneau (dir.), Deux Siècles de malédiction littéraire, Presses Universitaires de Liège, 2014.
Brissette, Pascal et Anthony Glinoer (dir.), Bohème sans frontière, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, « Interférences », 2010.
Festa-McCormick Diana, « The Myth of the Poètes Maudits », in Robert L. Mitchell (dir.), Pre-Text/Text/Context : Essays on Nineteenth-Century French Literature, Colombus, Ohio State University Press, 1980, p. 199-215.
Glinoer, Anthony, La Bohème. Une figure de l'imaginaire social, Les Presses de l'Université de Montréal, coll. Socius, 2018.
Les Bohèmes 1840-1870. Écrivains, journalistes, artistes, édité par Jean-Didier Wagner et François Cesto, Seyssel, Champ Vallon, « Les Classiques », 2012.
Malédictions littéraires, Textyles (Bruxelles), n° 53, 2018.
Meizoz Jérôme, Postures littéraires. Mises en scène modernes de l’auteur, Slatkine, 2007.
Starobinski, Jean, Portrait de l’artiste en saltimbanque (1970), Paris, gallimard, 2004.
Steinmetz Jean-Luc, « Du poète malheureux au poète maudit (réflexion sur la constitution d’un mythe) », Œuvres & Critiques, vol. VII, No 1, 1982, p. 75-86.
Steinmetz Jean-Luc , Ces poètes qu’on appelle maudits, Neuchâtel, La Baconnière, Nouvelle coll. Langages, 2020.
Vaillant, Alain et Vérilhac, Yoan (dir.), Vie de bohème et petite presse du XIXe siècle, Presses universitaire de Paris Nanterre, « Orbis litterarum », 2018.

The teaching includes two complementary ways of testing learning:
1. A paper in French to be handed in at least seven days before the oral test (50% of the assessment).
Of about 15 folders, it will carry on a topic of your choice related to the course subject, to be agreed mainly with the lecturer. Setting, bibliographical tools, writing methods and typographical standards will be communicated during class.
2. An oral test in French on the subjects discussed during the course (50% of the grade).
The test compulsorily involves :
- the reading and in-depth analysis of the texts on the "sources primaires" list
- the reading of two essays present in the "sources secondaires" list

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Lectures, conferences, textual analysis seminars

written and oral