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.
An oral examination to be held in French Language at the end of the course, aimed at assessing
- the knowledge of the contents included in the reference texts (available in e-learning)
- the ability to contextualize a novel selected among those available in e-learning and its author.
The course enables students to the understanding and critical assessment of the different language registers used in the French literature 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 contradictory processes of modernization.
Among the main objectives 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 nineteenth-century novels and in the contemporary ones, including movie versions.
- The language from late 19th century to 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, 1992 – available in e-learning.
• A. LAGARDE et L. MICHARD, XXe siècle : Les grands auteurs français du programme. Anthologie et Histoire littéraire, Paris, Bordas, 1992 - available in e-learning.
• P. BRUNEL, Y. BELLANGER, Histoire de la littérature française, Paris, Bordas. Trad. it. : Storia della letteratura francese, Rapallo, Cideb, (ed. Giovanni Bogliolo), 1999 - available in e-learning.
• L. SOZZI (ed.), Storia europea della letteratura francese. II. Dal Settecento all'età contemporanea, Torino, Einaudi, 2013.
• A.M. SCAIOLA, Il romanzo francese dell’Ottocento, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 2008.
The educational objectives of the Course will be achieved through 48 lecture hours, integrated with readings and discussions of selected texts and multimedia tools with the help of monolingual dictionaries (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.