Since the 16th century, the political and religious mobilization of Protestant poets (Agrippa d'Aubigné) paved the way to the philosophers of the Enlightenment who diffused their ideas through literary fictional works (Candid of Voltaire, Persian Letters of Montesquieu). Realism and Naturalism of the 19th century extended and made more complex the link between literature and politic. In the 20th, a new literary genre emerged: militant literature, a genre that provoked many controversies and counter-reactions of denial and reject concerning the political functions of literature. Those milestones underline the difficulty to define and borderline different fields of acting and thinking and to think methodologically about their intertwining links. The issues of the seminar are related to theoretical, aesthetical and political/ethical topics capable to sharpen and to deepen our understanding of literature and its writing practices within a specific culture and language.

The seminar is divided in 4 parts. The first part investigates the changes and evolutions of the literature and its role in the society: 1) the attitude of politicians to literature (Richelieu and the French Academy, Louis 14th and the theater, Frederic 2nd and Voltaire, the Commune and Mirbeau, censorship), 2) the different uses of literature by the politician, 3) authors and politics (Voltaire, Rousseau, Hugo, Camus). The second part is devoted to the analysis of theoretical essays on the topic (Tocqueville, Sartre, Bourdieu, Barthes). A speciaWe will have a special reading of Sartre's "Qu'est-ce que la littérature?", and discuss the consequences of this publication and its impact on later literary texts. The third part of the seminar is concerned with the emergence of a new literary genre: "la littérature engagée". In this part, discussions on the poetic characteristics and the literary functions of this genre will be hold. The link between engaged literature and anti-colonialist literature, as wll as interpretation issues will be examined too.

The fourth part of the seminar is conceived as a workshop where students will choose some literary masterpieces and team up to prepare methodological presentations about them.

 

Mandatory requirements:

1. Participation in the seminar (10%)

2. Reading of the bibliography on a weekly basis according to the program and preparation of the questions relied to the texts (10%).

3. Mid-semester paper (20%)

4. Participation in the activities of the "workshop" within a team (15%)

5. Final home-examination or Seminar paper (45%)

 

Bibliography:

A compulsory Bibliography list will be found in the course site