2011-2012 Academic Year

French Literature Studies

Degree/study: Degree in Humanities
Year: 3rd - 4th
Term: 3rd
Number of ECTS credits: 5
Hours of student dedication: 125
Teaching language or languages: catalan
Teaching Staff: Montserrat Cots

1. Presentation of the subject

French Literature and Travel

A study and interpretation of the main periods, schools, works and authors of French Literature through the means of Travel, which will act as a thread and give thematic unity to the course.

Students are advised to have some previous training in French Language and/or French Literature.

 

2. Competences to be attained

 

 

 

General competences

Specific competences

1.      Skills in interrelating Literature, Aesthetics, History and Geography.

2.      Developing analytical and critique skills for literary works.

3.      Identifying the evolution, the movements and the schools of a certain literature.

4.      Analysing and commenting literary texts. 

1.      Studying French Literature according to a thematic unity: travel.

2.      Studying travel as an aesthetic behaviour and as a way of living and experiencing the world.

3.      Reinforcing the students' knowledge of the French language and its expressive possibilities.

4.      Learning how to "read" a literary text in French (with the help of a translation, if necessary): analytical, aesthetic and critique skills.

5.      Familiarising students with textual analysis as taught in the French education system.

6.      Indirectly learning to relate French Literature to other Literatures.

7.      Learning to acquire a global view of literary facts.


3. Contents

Contents block 1. Renaissance and Travel.

Unit 1: Discoveries and Literature. Jacques Cartier.

Unit 2: The humanistic journey and the attitude to the New World.. Montaigne.

Contents block 2. The Journey to The Enlightenment.

Unit 1: The beginning of the American Dream. Abbé Prévost.

Unit 2: Enlightenment and the New World. Supplement au voyage de Bougainville, by Diderot.

Contents block 3. Romanticism and Travel.

Unit 1: Travel and the Romantic view of America. Chateaubriand.

Unit 2: The Romantic pilgrimages. Chateaubriand.

Unit 3: Romantic Spain. Voyage en Espagne, by Gautier; Carmen, by Mérimée.

Contents block 4. Traveller Writers in the 20th Century.

 Unit 1: André Gide and the journey to Congo.

Unit 2: Ethnographie and travel: Tristes tropiques, by Claude Lévi-Strauss.

 

*The full version with the sections 4. Assessment, 5. Bibliography and teaching resources, 6. Methodology, and 7. Planning of activities is available in the original version.