French 311 / Spring 99

Professor Nicole Vaget

Love and Seduction Rococo Style

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Course description and list of works

The aristocratic and bourgeois culture which prevailed in Paris from 1715 to the Revolution 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.

Literary works

Marivaux's Sylvia in Le Jeu de l'amour et du hasard Beaumarchais' Rosine in Le Mariage de Figaro Prévost's Manon in Manon Lescaut Voltaire's Cunégonde in Candide Montesquieu's Roxane in Les Lettres Persanes Rousseau's Julie in La Nouvelle Héloîse Diderot's Suzanne in La Religieuse Françoise de Graffigny's Zilia in Lettres d'une Péruvienne Madame Duras's Ourika La comtesse de L... Le chevalier de Boufflers: La reine de Golconde

 

Painters

Watteau Boucher Fragonard Greuze Chardin Adélaïde Labille-Guillard Mme Vigée-Lebrun

Films

Tavernier: Que la fête commence! Richard Heffron: La Révolution Patrice Leconte: Ridicule Stephen Frears: Dangerous Liaisons Gérard Corbiau: Farinelli Milos Forman's Valmont Truffaut's L'enfant sauvage

This course will be managed from the web. Students will learn to use the web editor PageMill and will post their course assignments and final paper on their home page with links to the course:

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/nvaget/18/index.html

Class meets on Mondays and Wednesdays from 1:30 to 2:45 pm.

Films will be shown every Monday night from 7 to 9 pm in Ciruti 9

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