 2014 - 2015 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| 0680-3245-01 | Writing Childhood: Sartre in the Path of Rousseau | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| FACULTY OF HUMANITIES | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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University credit hours: 2.0
Course description
The class examines the different forms of autobiographical writing in France through two major examples: Rousseau and Sartre. We will focus on childhood in autobiography. Rousseau's Confessions constitutes a starting-point of Autobiography in France, a first model which became canonical. Autobiography became an important literary genre in the 20th century, where it flourished in many ways. We will study about an outstanding example of Autobiography in the 20th century: Sartre's Words. First, we will explore the analogies and the differences between The Words and The Confessions. The close reading of Sartre's Words will be based, on one hand, on Sartre's other works, and, on the other hand, on other major French cases of contemporary autobiographies, like Perec's W and Sarraute's Childhood. This approach will allow us to grasp anew the figure of the child and the notion of childhood in general.