French Culture and Civilization I

French 241 Professor Taormina

French Culture and Civilization I

Office: 1320 Hunter West

Email:

Tel: 212-772-5099

Description:

This course charts the major political, religious, and cultural trends in France from the time of Charlemagne through the Enlightenment as expressed in literature, discursive prose, architecture, and painting. Students read original works in translation. Class lectures focus on presenting the political and religious upheavals as well as the cultural assumptions and mentalities required for a better understanding of these selected masterpieces in French literature and art. Students will be examined on the knowledge they have culled from the lectures, from their own reading and research, and on their ability tocite concrete examples from primary texts as typical or atypical of the larger social, political, and cultural context.

Required Books (available at Shakespeare & Co):

The Song of Roland, trans. Glyn Burgess (Penguin, 1990).

*Lyrics of the Troubadours, trans. Frederick Goldin (Anchor Books, 1973).

*François Villon, The Poems, trans. Galway Kinnell (UP of New England, 1965).

*Montaigne, Essays, trans. Donald M. Frame (Stanford UP, 1943).

*Joachim Du Bellay, The Regrets, The Antiquities of Rome, The Defense and Enrichment of the French Language, trans. Richard Helgerson (U of Pennsylvania Press, 2006).

Corneille, Horace, trans. Alan Brownjohn (Angel Books, 1996).

Descartes, A Discourse on the Method, trans. Ian Maclean (Oxford UP, 2006).

Molière, Don Juan, trans. Richard Wilbur (Harcourt, Harvest Book, 2001).

La Rochefoucauld, Maxims, trans. John Heard, Jr. (Dover Publications, 2006).

Racine, Phaedra, trans. Richard Wilbur (Harcourt, 1996).

Madame de Lafayette, The Princesse de Clèves, trans. Robin Buss (Penguin, 1992).

*Montesquieu, Persian Letters, trans. C.J. Betts (Penguin, 1993).

Voltaire, Candide, trans. Robert M. Adams (Norton Critical Edition, 1996).

*Robert Darnton, “Philosophers Trim the Tree of Knowledge,” The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (Vintage Books, 1985).

*Available in course packet.

Calendar:

Week 1. Introduction

Week 2. The Song of Roland

*Troubadours (selections)

Week 3. The Great Cathedrals

*François Villon, The Testament (excerpt)

Week 4. *Du Bellay, Defense and Enrichment of the French Language;

The Antiquities of Rome(selections); Regrets (selections).

Week 5. Tues. 2/19 *Montaigne, I: 1, 5, 6, 26, 47; II: 6, 10; III: 1.

EXAM

Week 6. Corneille, Horace

Week 7. Descartes, A Discourse on the Method

Week 8. La Rochefoucauld, Maxims

Week 9. Molière, Don Juan

Week 10. Racine, Phaedra

Week 11. Versailles

Week 12. Madame de Lafayette, The Princesse de Clèves

RESEARCH PAPER DUE(5 pages)

SPRING BREAK

Week 13. *Montesquieu, Persian Letters (selections)

Week 14. Voltaire, Candide

Week 15. *Darnton, “Philosophers Trim the Tree of Knowledge”

FINAL EXAM

Do not leave New York prior to this date. Do not miss the final exam. There will be no make-ups given. No exceptions will be made.

Assignments

1. Exam 1

2. Research Paper

3. Final Exam

Grade Percentages

Attendance: 8%

Participation: 12%

Exam 1: 20%

Research Paper: 30%

Final Exam: 30%

Rules and Regulations

1. Please keep this syllabus handy and consult it for all questions about due dates, assignments, etc.

2. Bring your book or the course packet, a pen, and a notebook everyday to class. Mark the relevant passages that have been discussed in class. Take notes, jot down what has been said in class; jot down questions to yourself; copy down what is written on the board; anything said or written during class can show up on an exam.

3. You must be present at all exams. No make-ups, no exceptions. You must turn in the research paper on the date indicated. No late assignments. You may send it to me through email, but only if absolutely necessary. I cannot be responsible for any technical glitches (i.e. not receiving your email, no attachment, a scrambled attachment, etc.). It is your job to do the work, print it, and get it to me on time.

4. You must do all the reading as indicated on the syllabus before coming to class. Be ready to discuss the reading or to ask questions. If I feel that some students have not read the texts, or have done so in a perfunctory way, I reserve the right to give a pop quiz on the reading. Any pop quizzes will count toward participation.

5. You are allowed 2 absences without penalty, no questions asked. On the third absence, your 8% attendance = 0. If you are seriously ill, or if there is a family crisis, your absence may be excused and not noted. I reserve the right to determine which absences may be excused. But keep me informed. Chronic tardiness will be counted as absence. If you miss class, ask a classmateto catch you up with the notes.

6. Plagiarism. Unfortunately, either due to the amount of information available on-line, or because of a desire to succeed, students are increasingly plagiarizing. Plagiarism is defined as the illegitimate borrowing of an idea, argument, or words from someone else and passing them off as your own. Plagiarism is considered academic dishonesty and is therefore explicitly prohibited by the Hunter College Administration. Anyone suspected of plagiarism may be subject to disciplinary action.

Certain ideas, arguments, and even certain words have been “discovered” by certain authors, and, for this reason, belong to them. It is as if such ideas, arguments, and words had been signed the way a work of art is signed. True, the most original and astonishing ideas, arguments, and words of a period end up, over time, being incorporated into the common reservoir of knowledge, e.g. the “idea” (Plato), the printing press (Gutenberg), or the “unconscious” (Freud). You must therefore be discriminating. Cite whatever does not belong to you, but do not cite the ideas, arguments, or words that are shared “in common.” For example, everyone knows that the Second World War lasted from 1939 to 1945, and that the United States entered the war in 1942. If you did not know these facts, all you would have to do is look them up in a book; in that case, however, you do not have to cite the book. The facts are common knowledge.

To avoid committing plagiarism, it is enough to cite the source of the idea, argument, or words. There are two basic ways. 1) You can incorporate the citation into your own writing. For example: Deleuze and Guattari, in Anti-Oedipus, assert that the unconscious is not a theater but a factory. Or 2) you can put quotation marks (“ ”) around the exact citation of a passage, a phrase, or a single word and then note the source at the bottom of the page. For example: “The new philosophical and critical approaches that appeared in the course of the seventeenth century marked a fundamental rupture with the principle of authority.”[1] The citation of web-sites is done in the same way as book titles. Paste the address of the web-site at the bottom of the page.

Citation styles vary according to convention. See Joseph Gibaldi, MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (New York: The Mondern Language Association of America, 1999); there is also The Chicago Manual of Style (15th edition, 2007); both are located in Reference in Hunter College’s Library or may beaccessed on-line from Hunter College’s library web-page (find “research tools,” click on “reference sites,” then click on “style manuals”); or you may buy them for your own library.

7. No eating, no drinking, no texting, no phones, no private conversations during class.

Background and Research (available in Hunter’s library):

Adam, Antoine. Grandeur and Illusion: French Literature and Society, 1600-1715, trans. Herbert Tint (Basic Books, 1972).

Ayer, A.J. Voltaire (Random House, 1986).

Backman,Clifford R. The Worlds of Medieval Europe (Oxford UP, 2003).

Bloch, Marc. Feudal Society, trans. L.A. Manyon (U of Chicago Press, 1961).

Bonney, Richard. Society and Government in France under Richelieu and Mazarin, 1624-1661 (St. Martin’s Press, 1988).

Borgerhoff, E.B.O. The Freedom of French Classicism (Princeton UP, 1950).

Chartier, Roger. The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution, trans. Lydia G.Cochrane (Duke UP, 1991).

Clarke, David R. Pierre Corneille: Poetics and Political Drama under Louis XIII (Cambridge UP, 1992).

Collins, James B. The State in Early Modern France (Cambridge UP, 1995).

—. “State-Building in Early Modern Europe: The Case of France.” Modern Asian Studies 31.3 (July 1997): 603-633. {cf. JSTOR}

Craveri, Benedetta. The Age of Conversation, trans. Teresa Waugh (NYRB, 2005).

Diefendorf, Barbara B. Beneath the Cross: Catholics and Huguenots in Sixteenth-Century Paris (Oxford UP, 1991).

DeJean, Joan. Tender Geographies: Women and the Origins of the Novel in France (Columbia UP, 1991).

Dewald, Jonathan. The European Nobility: 1400-1800 (Cambridge UP, 1996).

Duby, Georges. Love and Marriage in the Middle Ages, trans. Jane Dunnet (U of Chicago Press, 1994).

—. The Age of the Cathedrals: Art and Society, 980-1420, trans. Levieux and Thompson (U of Chicago Press, 1981).

—. The Three Orders: Feudal Society Imagined, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (U of Chicago Press, 1980).

Duggan, Anne E. Salonnieres, Furies, and Fairies: The Politics of Gender and Cultural Change in Absolutist France (U of Delaware Press, 2005).

Elias, Norbert. The Court Society, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Pantheon Books, 1983).

Gay, Peter. Voltaire’s Politics: the Poet as Realist (Yale UP, 1988).

Goldsmith, Elizabeth C. Exclusive Conversations: The Art of Interaction in Seventeenth-Century France (U of Pennsylvania Press, 1988).

Greengrass, M. The French Reformation (Blackwell, 1987).

Harth, Erica. Cartesian Women: Versions and Subversions of Rational Discourse in the Old Regime (Cornell UP, 1992).

Henry, Patrick. An Inimitable Example: The Case for the Princesse de Clèves (Catholic University of America Press, 1992).

Hesse, Carla. The Other Enlightenment: How French Women Became Modern (Princeton UP, 2003).

Housley, Norman. Contesting the Crusades (Blackwell Publishers, 2006).

Landesman, Charles. Skepticism: The Central Issues (Blackwell, 2002).

Levi, Anthony. Cardinal Richelieu and the Making of France (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2000).

Maclean, Ian. Woman Triumphant: Feminism in French Literature, 1610-1652 (Oxford Clarendon, 1977).

Madden, Thomas F. The New Concise History of the Crusades (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006).

Marion, Jean-Luc. Cartesian Questions: Method and Metaphysics (U of Chicago Press, 1998).

McMahon, Darrin M. Enemies of the Enlightenment: the French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity (Oxford UP, 2001).

Mitford, Nancy. The Sun King (London: Sphere Books, 1966).

Mukerji, Chandra. Territorial Ambitions and the Gardens of Versailles (Cambridge UP, 1997).

Owen, D.D.R. Eleanor of Aquitaine: Queen and Legend (Cambridge UP, 1993).

Paden, William D. The Voice of the “Trobairitz”: Perspectives on the Women Troubadours (U of Pennsylvania Press, 1989).

Paterson, Linda M. The World of the Troubadours: Medieval Occitan Society, 1100-1300 (Cambridge UP, 1993).

Pernoud, Régine. Women in the Days of the Cathedrals, trans. Anne Côté-Harriss (Ignatius Press, 1998).

Sala-Molins, Louis. Dark Side of the Light: Slavery and the French Enlightenment, trans. John Conteh-Morgan (U of Minnesota Press, 2006).

Schmaltz, Tad M. Radical Cartesianism: The French Reception of Descartes (Cambridge UP, 2002).

Story, Joana, ed. Charlemagne: Empire and Society (Manchester UP, 2005).

Werner, Stephen. The Comic Philosophes: Montesquieu, Voltaire, Diderot, Sade (Summa Publications, 2002).

Wood, James B. The King’s Army: Warfare, Soldiers, and Society during the Wars of Religion in France, 1562-1576 (Cambridge UP, 1996).

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[1] Hans Bots et Françoise Waquet, La République des lettres (Paris: Éditions Belin, 1997) 52. My translation.