FRENCH 208 Women and Literary Tradition

An introduction to women's writing from Marie de France to Marguerite Duras, from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century.  The course is designed to develop an appreciation of women's place in French literary history. Special attention is given to the continuities among women writers and to the impact of their minority status upon their writing. Prerequisite: 202 or 203, an SAT II score of 650-680, an equivalent departmental placement score, or an AP score of 4

This course is an introduction to the study of French literature.  Its specific goal is to develop a basic understanding of the richness and diversity of women's literary tradition by means of close analysis of selected works from the twelfth through the twentieth centuries.  Reading assignments range from poems and other short texts to excerpts from longer works and short novels.  We will progress to a maximum assignment of fifty pages over the span of the semester.  To appreciate the context in which these women wrote, we will refer to the prevalent masculine tradition as well as to the writings of other women authors whose influence on the evolution of French literature is finally gaining recognition.  Highlighting what historians of literature have traditionally--and sometimes disparagingly--referred to as the "singularity" of women's writing, the course will examine, in a positive sense, women writers' tendency to break with social language and literary codes, to challenge the characteristic attitudes, ideas, and conventions of the dominant tradition of men's writing.  We will study not only familiar genres such as the novel (women played a pivotal role in the creation and evolution of this genre) and poetry, but also less "mainstream" ones:  fairy tales and letters, both admirably illustrated by a plethora of women writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.  In our chronological overview we will be especially attentive to recurrent themes, including love, mother/daughter relations, education, women's literary and social emancipation.  In short, we will view these women not as the object of man's desire or discourse but as subjects thinking and creating independently, expressing their desires, their wishes for themselves and humanity, their vision of society and the world, their own experience of love, power and powerlessness.

Short papers will be assigned through the semester.  Intensive participation in class discussion is expected.  One short final project.

Authors include:  Marie de France, Christine de Pizan, women troubadours (Middle Ages); Louise Labé, Marguerite de Navarre (Renaissance); Madeleine de Scudéry, Marie-Madeleine de Lafayette, Marie de Sévigné, Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy, (seventeenth century); Jeanne Marie Le Prince de Beaumont, Françoise de Graffigny, Isabelle de Charrière (eighteenth century); Germaine de Staël, George Sand, Marceline Desbordes-Valmore (nineteenth century); Colette, Renée Vivien, Joyce Mansour, Simone de Beauvoir, Nathalie Sarraute, Marguerite Duras, Monique Wittig (twentieth century).

 Texts:

Mistacco, Vicki,  Les Femmes et la tradition littéraire : Anthologie du Moyen Age a nos jours (2 vols.)     

        Première partie: XIIe-XVIIIe siècles.

        Seconde partie: XIXe-XXIe siècles.