Nicole Berthe Claudine Grangeat-Vaget, Reverend Joseph
Paradis Professor
of French
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Courses currently taught in French
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Courses on Social and Political Issues and Critical Approaches
- French 311: Moliere in Context
We will study the time of Moliere: Louis XIV, Versailles and how Baroque art served the king and the church.
We will read plays by Molière and study what he says about the difference between the sexes in the 17th century: young girls in love, worried mothers, docile wives, arrogant servants on one hand and young men in love, abusive husbands and fathers on the other.
We will read Les précieuses ridicules, les femmes savantes, Don Juan, Tartuffe, l'ecole des femmes et le bourgeois gentilhomme.
We will study the political and artisitc climate of the time with films such as Le roi danse, Vatel, Tous les matins du monde, and Farinelli
- French 331: Topic Molière, Marivaux, Musset: Interplay of Love, Money and Seduction (Pre-1800)
- French 311: French Baroque and Rococo Literature and Art:
This course focuses on the sentimental journeys of famous 17th and 18th century characters such as la princesse de Clèves and Don Juan, Valmont and la marquise de Merteuil, and others characters of Molière, Marivaux, and Beaumarchais.
- French
311: The Pursuit of Happiness
in France in the Age of Enlightenment
Although the eighteenth century ended in
turmoil, artists as well as philosophers and writers firmly believed
that they had discovered the secrets of collective happiness. For
the playwright Marivaux and the painters Watteau, Boucher, and Fragonard,
love and sensuality constituted the main avenues to happiness and
in their works they represented a kaleidoscope of psychologies and
passions. For Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Bernardin de Saint-Pierre,
happiness was to be found in a paradisiac dream of a new golden
age in which perfect harmony with nature would be achieved (Les
rèveries d'un promeneur solitaire, Paul et Viginie). For
Diderot, any belief in God was an obstacle to happiness, but like
Montesquieu and the painter Greuze, he recommended practicing moral
virtue to achieve social harmony (Pensées philosophiques,
Les Lettres persanes). For Voltaire happiness depended on the creation
of a just and tolerant society in which free men and women lived
in peace (Les Lettres philosophiques, Candide). As Chardin's paintings
also illustrated, prosperity based on commerce would guarantee that
each citizen could live comfortably and even luxuriously. For Beaumarchais,
the secret of happiness lay essentially in social justice (Le mariage
de Figaro). In this course we will complement the study of literary
and philosophical texts with the examination of paintings of the
time. We will also view some cinematic attempts at representing
eighteenth-century society (Milos Forman's Valmont, Truffaut's L'enfant
sauvage, Tavernier's Que la fête commence!, Richard Heffron's
La Révolution: les années lumières).
- French
311: Love and Seduction
Rococo Style
The aristocratic and bourgeois culture which
prevailed in Paris from 1715 to the evolution of 1789 is known as
the French Rococo period. While contemporary philosophers sought
happiness in redesigning an ideal society, rococo artists and writers
who mainly catered to the aristocracy found solace in love and seduction.
For them, love was a pass time and women's idealised beauty a source
of inspiration; for others, beauty could only be found in the soul
of a virtous woman . A selection of works by the most representative
philosophers and artists of the "Age of Enlightenment"
will be annalysed in the socio-historical context of the XVIIIth
century. We will also study contemporary films evocating the XVIIIth
century.
- French 331 Fictional
Heroines in the Ancien Régime
(pre-1800)
The
purpose of this course is to create an
electronic edition of an unpublished 18th
century manuscript "Les
Mémoires de la comtesse
de L..." Using fiction by
female writers of the 16th, 17th,
and 18th centuries, students
will probe
the realities of women's lives
in the Ancien Régime:
loveless marriages, convents,
prostitution, and madness. In
addition to
examining fictional heroines
of Diderot, l'abbé Prévost,
Choderlos de Laclos, and le marquis
de Sade, students will learn
to encode structural, contextual,
and analytical elements of the
text using the latest Web technologies.
(Technological support
will be integretated into the course.)
- French 331 Course
on Social and Political Issues and Critical Approaches: From
Rococo to Revolution
- Fall 2009: French 331: Revolutions, Romantisme et Réalisme
Through the study of key works in literature (Balzac, Stendhal, Flaubert, Zola, George Sand, Maupassant)
and art (Delacroix,Gros,Gericault, Courbet, Millet, Daumier, Manet, Degas, etc... ) we will expore the way of life and mentality of upper and lower classes in 19th century French society
XXth century Studies: Social and Political
Issues/ Critical Approaches
- French 331 Political
Passion and National Predicament: 1789 and 1940 in France in films
In this course students will have the opportunity
to study two passion-filled moments of French history: the spectacular
revolution of 1789, and the startling collaboration of France and
Germany during the Second World War. Since contemporary Cinema gives
us a chance to peer into the past while reflecting on major questions
of the present, we will examine the works of film directors such
as Abel Gance, Andrzej Wajda, Ettore Scola, who reinvented the French
revolution, and of others such as Marcel Ophuls, Claude Chabrol,
Claude Berri, Louis Malle, Alain Resnais, François Truffaud
who probed moments of great distress for a French population torn
between the conflicting forces of resistance and collaboration.
Students will examine the viewpoints and intentions of the film
directors who were inspired by these dramatic events, and find ways
to make connections to our own reality today. We will consider how
these times of great turmoil, peril, and promise provide an ideal
dramatic backdrop for the promotion of ideas on love, war, and politics
in today’s society.
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French 370 : Senior Seminar "Avoir Vingt Ans" -Youth
and Ambition or the Past Revisited
This course seeks to recall all lovers, warriors,
dreamers, social climbers, sports fanatics, and other "action
figures" of France's collective past, equating or contrasting
their aspirations with the dreams of modern youth. Students will
study the lives and visions of heroes such as Jeanne d'Arc, La Princesse
de Clèves, Candide, Napoléon Bonaparte, Julien Sorel,
Eugène de Rastignac, Emma Bovary, Saint Exupéry, and
Frison-Roche. Using films, modern novels, newspaper articles, and
drawing on their own personal experience, students will investigate
and examine the sociocultural nd political issues that confront
contemporary French youth
European
Studies
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