READINGS IN FRENCH
- Overview
- Assessment methods
- Learning objectives
- Contents
- Bibliography
- Delivery method
- Teaching methods
- Contacts/Info
Admission is reserved to the students who have passed the exam of Elements of French Language, or those who certify the level A2: a basic level of proficiency is necessary to read and understand texts such as fiction, newspaper articles and essays addressed to the general public.
For the attending students the test mode can be articulated as follows:
- PARTIAL ORAL TEST: during the semester, on agreed dates, oral presentations of texts will take place, in French, following a methodology provided by the teacher.
The student must reach the score of 18/30 to access the final oral test.
The text and the author presented in the partial test will not be subject to further verification in the final oral test.
- FINAL ORAL TEST: it will be held at the end of the course, during the specially set appeals, in French and will verify the acquisition of the course contents based on the reference texts and the correct comprehension of the texts, available on the e-learning platform, and the contextualization of the novel of which the text has been chosen and its author in the French language.
The test vote takes into account the knowledge of the literary currents and authors of the period under analysis, as well as the linguistic understanding of the text and finally the ability to express and interact in French.
The final grade will be the result of the average between the partial oral test and the final test.
For non-attending students there will be only one final oral test, in French, in which the knowledGe and understanding of the topics presented in the reference books and literary texts available on the e-learning platform will be tested.
The course enables students to the understanding and critical assessment of the different language registers used in the French novel from the second half of the 19th century to the present. Nineteenth-century French novel is an essential source to understand past and present French society as well as the narrative of this time period.
Among the main we find:
- knowledge of the basic French vocabulary, as it is used in the literature;
- capacity to use the appropriate linguistic tools to acquire an in-depth knowledge of the French language;
- knowledge of the French society and culture between 19th and 20th centuries, a key period for the study of European History and the origins of modernity.
The course aims to offer an in-depth knowledge of the linguistic strategies and languages in the Francophone world during the 19th and 20th centuries, through which it is also possible to understand some key features of the society of the time.
A special attention will be devoted to the following topics:
- The language of workers in E. Zola/V. Hugo/A. Dumas (père et fils) and, as for the more recent literature, Edouard Louis
- Comparing the languages of popular classes, privileged classes, and nobility in the novels from the 19th century to present day.
- The language of late 19th century/early 20th century reconstructed through the books of Claude Izner
alias Liliane Korb (Paris, 1940) and Laurence Lefèvre (Paris, 1951), authors of crime novels set in Paris in the years of the Exposition Universelle.
• A. LAGARDE et L. MICHARD, XIXe siècle : Les grands auteurs français du programme. Anthologie et Histoire littéraire, Paris, Bordas.
• A. LAGARDE et L. MICHARD, XXe siècle : Les grands auteurs français du programme. Anthologie et Histoire littéraire, Paris, Bordas.
• P. BRUNEL, Y. BELLANGER, Histoire de la littérature française, Paris, Bordas. Trad. it. : Storia della letteratura francese, Rapallo, Cideb, (a cura di Giovanni Bogliolo)
• L. SOZZI (a cura di), Storia europea della letteratura francese. II. Dal settecento all'età contemporanea, Torino, Einaudi, 2013
The educational objectives of the Course will be achieved through 48 lecture hours, dedicated to the reading of texts with the help of monolingual dictionaries (mostly available online): the Trésor de la langue française informatisé (TLFI), the Dictionnaire de l’Académie Française, Littré, Larousse, and the use of a text database such as gallica.bnf.fr.
Students are required to previously schedule a meeting by sending an e-mail to the lecturer.