This paper is available for the academic year 2024-25.
This paper is about nineteenth-century France's most visible cultural form: the novel. It introduces students to ultra-canonical literary fiction of the period, and other less well-known novels, in asking how writers tackle some of the most pressing ideological questions of their age. We payÌýclose attention to the political history of the period, which was marked by a tumultuous series of revolutions, changes to its colonial empire, the rise of socialism, and civil and foreign wars. We also explore the legal, institutional, and cultural powers that sought to regulate private lives and desires, gender roles, marital and familial relationships, and sexual freedoms. Across our reading on the paper, we ask: how did literary fiction participate in debates about the politics of sex, gender, race, and nation? What roles could the novel play in reproducing, critiquing, or endorsing the social worlds it described?
This broad thematic approach has the double advantage of reflecting specialist research interests in the French Section while simultaneously reflecting some of the most important and fruitful critical approaches to the subject that have developed in recent decades.
Learning Objectives
- To introduce students to a robust corpus of primary texts, including both ultra-canonical and some less well-known works, with a stress on prose fiction;
- To provide you with a broad contextual knowledge within which to situate the set texts;
- To foster a precise understanding of how the novel form worked: the shapes and devices of its plots, its modes of narration, the voices it included, etc.
- To improve your knowledge of the cultural and political history of nineteenth-century France;
- To acquaint you with some of the major conceptual strands of research in nineteenth-century French studies over the past thirty years;
- To alert you to the usefulness and to the limitations of gender, class,Ìýrace and sexuality for literary and historical analysis.
Topics and Texts for 2024/25
The three topics on the paper will be taught in the following order, with three set texts attached to each topic. We will start with Bergeaud's allegorical novel of the Haitian Revolution, Stella, which students should read this summer. The best place to start in terms of accompanying critical material is a chapter called "A Quarrel Between Two Brothers" to be found online via idiscover in Marlene Daut's book, Tropics of Haiti : race and the literary history of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic world, 1789-1865Ìý(Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2015), pp. 412 - 458.
A.ÌýEmpire, Nation, and the Nineteenth-Century Novel
- Émeric Bergeaud,ÌýStella
- George Sand:ÌýIndiana
- GuyÌýde Maupassant,ÌýBel-Ami
ÌýB. Romance Plots: Love Triangles and Other Narrative Shapes
- Benjamin Constant,ÌýAdolphe
- ³Ò³Ü²õ³Ù²¹±¹±ðÌý¹ó±ô²¹³Ü²ú±ð°ù³Ù,ÌýMadame Bovary
- Anatole France,ÌýLe Lys rouge
C.Ìý Novels of the People: Class Politics
- George Sand,ÌýLa Petite Fadette
- Edmond and Jules de Goncourt,ÌýGerminie Lacerteux
- Émile Zola: Germinal
In most cases, students can use any modern paperback edition (GF or Folio, for instance). In the case of Émeric Bergeaud's Stella, we recommend the ZOE edition (ed. Anne Marty), ISBN-13: ‎ 978-2881826504 or the LEGS edition (ed. Carolyn Shread), ISBN-13: ‎ 978-9997071002. A 19th century edition of Stella is freely available in full online on the Digital Library of the Caribbean. Click link to open resource
Content Notes
Please be aware that the set texts in this paper do evoke difficult and sensitive subjects. These include race andÌýracism (Bergeaud, Maupassant, Goncourts), slavery (Bergeaud, Sand's Indiana), sexual violenceÌý(the Goncourts, Zola), anti-Semitism (Maupassant)ÌýandÌýsuicide (Flaubert, Sand).
For preparatory reading, and a list of recommended critical material, visit the
Students taking paper Fr11 will follow, over Michaelmas, Lent and Easter terms, a single, 16-20 lecture core course. This is divided intoÌý three separately titled ‘topics’, plus additional introductory and revisionÌýlectures.
- Each topic will take the form of three or four lectures and be supported by two supervisions. In addition, there will be two further revision supervisions.
- Ample reading lists will be provided to encourage wider critical and contextual reading.
The paper is assessed by coursework and exam.
Coursework: one essay in response to a comparative question set at the end of Lent Term, to be completed by the beginning of Easter TermÌý with reference to at least three of the texts you have studied. Each question will refer to one of the three topics on the paper.
Exam: a three-hour written paper, answering one question from each of the two sections. Each Section A essay question refers to just one set text; Section B offers a choice between two passages for commentary.
Candidates may not draw substantially on the same material in more than one answer for Fr11 assessment e.g. they should not focus in their Coursework on a text they intend to write an essay on in the Exam.
Professor Nick White (Michaelmas Term 2024) | |
Dr Claire White (Lent & Easter Terms 2025) |