FREN 5350 is also offered in Fall 2024
FREN 5350 is also offered in Fall 2023
FREN 5350 is also offered in Fall 2022
FREN 5350 is also offered in Spring 2022
Fall 2023 | FREN 5350 Section 001: Topics in Literature and Culture -- Writing Evil: the French Tradition (33176)
- Instructor(s)
- Class Component:
- Lecture
- Credits:
- 3 Credits
- Repeat Credit Limit:
- 12 Credits
- Grading Basis:
- Student Option
- Instructor Consent:
- No Special Consent Required
- Instruction Mode:
- In Person
- Class Attributes:
Topics Course
- Enrollment Requirements:
- Exclude fr or soph 5000 level courses
- Times and Locations:
Regular Academic Session
UMTC, East Bank
Virtual Rooms NORMREQD
- Enrollment Status:
Open (12 of 20 seats filled)
- Also Offered:
- Course Catalog Description:
- Problem, period, author, or topic of interest. See Class Schedule. prereq: 3101 or equiv
- Class Notes:
- Title: Writing Evil: the French Tradition. Description: In his 1951 masterpiece L'Homme révolté, Albert Camus laid out the intellectual history of a metaphysical and historical rebellion that started in the mid-18th century and culminated with the totalitarianisms of the 20th century - fascism, Nazism and communism, via the French Revolution, the Russian nihilists and terrorists, the Russian revolution and the crimes of Stalinism. Within his "history of two hundred years of European pride," as he called it, Camus also proposed a philosophical approach to literary movements that are crucial to our understanding of a French literary modernity nurtured by a fascination in the Marquis de Sade (an author arguably rediscovered after the Second World war but in fact already an object of fascination in the mid-19th century). French literary modernity includes Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Lautréamont, Dandyism as antinomianism and rebellion against external law, and later on the Surrealist movement. To be sure Camus falls short of exploring the works of the poet of evil, Jean Genet, his contemporary. The nihilist and antisemitic novelist Louis-Ferdinand Céline is also missing from Camus's intellectual and literary history of metaphysical and esthetic rebellion. In this seminar we will read French literary modernity through the prism of metaphysical rebellion (rebellion against God, rebellion against Being) and the reclaiming of an esthetic of evil and transgression. We will draw on Camus's unique insights on metaphysics and his penetrating understanding of nihilistic and gnostic motifs in European modernity, and extend those insights to contemporary novelists to show that the tradition of metaphysical rebellion has outlived Sade, Baudelaire and Lautréamont and penetrated deep into our contemporary era.
http://classinfo.umn.edu/?FREN5350+Fall2023
- Class Description:
- Student may contact the instructor or department for information.
- Textbooks:
- https://bookstores.umn.edu/course-lookup/33176/1239
ClassInfo Links - Fall 2023 French Classes