Department of French

Paper Fr 9

Reason, Experience, and Authority: French Literature, Thought, and History, 1594-1700

This paper will be offered at Part II from 2012/2013

Reading List

The period covered by this paper corresponds to France's emergence as the greatest and most culturally influential power in Europe. Its chronological starting-point is the effective end of the Wars of Religion; it ends in 1700 with Louis XIV still at the height of his power, before the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-14) put an end to France's European hegemony. It covers the central literary, cultural, and intellectual processes of the period: the flowering of theatre (tragedy and comedy), in a relationship of creative tension with dramatic theory; developments in prose fiction and in poetry; the challenge to scholasticism of new philosophies, especially Cartesianism; the increasing cultural prominence of women; the religious controversies associated with Jansenism; the stirrings of dissent from moral, religious, and political authority. Whether in exploring, or depicting, human nature, or in evaluating the productions of art, seventeenth-century writers, both male and female, weighed the claims of different approaches to the search for knowledge: the acceptance of traditional forms of authority, especially religious; reliance on the free operation of the reason; submitting both tradition and reason to the test of experience.

Teaching methods

Teaching will take the form of lectures and supervisions, with students being expected to receive ten supervisions in the course of the year. Assessment will be by examination.

Learning outcomes

• Detailed knowledge of major texts of French literary and/or intellectual history.
• Ability to place texts in historical and intellectual context.
• Ability to identify key interpretive issues raised by texts.
• Ability to follow abstract philosophical arguments and to make sense of unfamiliar ideas and patterns of thought.
• Grasp of the key historical and intellectual developments of the period, and ability to interpret texts with reference to these.
• Ability to tie textual interpretation to close linguistic observation.
• Ability to compare and contrast texts accurately and pertinently.
• Ability to recognize and evaluate different approaches to texts, intellectual movements, schools of thought.

Examination

Please see the specimen exam paper for an example of the current format of the paper.

Further information

Please contact Dr Emma Gilby eg207@cam.ac.uk to discuss the paper further.