Department of French

Paper Fr1

Introduction to French literature, linguistics, thought and film

Prescribed Texts 2013-2014

Renaud de Beaujeu, Le Bel Inconnu (Paris: Champion, 2003).
Pierre Ronsard, Les Amours (1552-1584), ed. Marc Bensimon and James L. Martin (Paris: GF Flammarion, 1981)
Sonets pour Hélène, Books I and II (pp. 261-314)
Racine, Phèdre, ed. Christian Delmas and Georges Forestier, Collection Folio Théâtre no. 23 (Paris: Gallimard, 1995).
Laclos, Les Liaisons dangereuses (precise edition to be confirmed).
Emile Zola, Thérèse Raquin, ed. Henri Mitterand (Garnier Flammarion, 2008).
Agnès Varda (director), Cléo de 5 à 7 (1962)

Linguistics

There are no set texts for the linguistics section of this paper. As preparation for this section, students may find it helpful to have read an introductory work, such as A. Battye, M.A. Hintze and P. Rowlett, The French Language Today (Routledge) or H. Walter, Le Français dans tous les sens (Laffont). They may also find it helpful to have familiarised themselves with the International Phonetic Alphabet; see, for example, G. Price, An Introduction to French Pronunciation (Blackwell).

Students may also find it helpful to consult the following:

General works

Z. Fagyal et al, French: A Linguistic Introduction (Cambridge, CUP, 2006)
A. Battye, M-A. Hintze and P. Rowlett, The French Language Today (London, Routledge, 2000)
C. Désirat & T. Hordé, La Langue française au 20e siècle (Paris, Bordas, 1976)
D. Ager, Sociolinguistics and Contemporary French (Cambridge, CUP, 1990)
B. Muller, Le Français d'aujourd'hui (Paris, Klinksieck, 1985)
M. Offord, Varieties of Contemporary French (London, Macmillan, 1990)
C. Sanders (ed), French Today (Cambridge University Press, 1993)
R. A. Lodge, N. Armstrong, Y. M. Ellis & J. F. Sheltan, Exploring the French Language (Arnold, 1997)
H. Walter, Le Français dans tous les sens (Paris, Robert Laffont, 1988)

More Specialised Studies

Written and Spoken French

G. Price, An Introduction to French Pronunciation (Oxford, Blackwell, 2005)
C. Blanche-Benveniste, Le français parlé: études grammaticales (Paris, CNRS, 1990)
C. Blanche-Benveniste, Approches de la langue parlée en français (Paris, Ophrys, 1997)
F. Gadet, Le Français populaire (Paris, PUF (Que-sais-je) 1992)
A. Rigault, La Grammaire du français parlé (Paris, Hachette, 1981)
A. Sauvageot, Français parlé - français écrit (Larousse, 1962)

Orthography

N. Catach, 'The reform of the writing system' in C. Sanders (ed), French Today (Cambridge, CUP 1993)
N. Catach, L'Orthographe (Paris, PUF, (Que sais-je?) 1978)
C. Blanche-Benveniste & A. Cherval, L'Orthographe (Paris, Maspero, 1969; rééd. 1978)

Vocabulary

P. Gilbert, Dictionnaire des mots nouveauxs (Paris, Tchou, 1980 & 1985)
A. Goosse, La Néologie française aujourd'hui: Observations et réflexions (Paris, Conseil international de la langue française, 1975)
H. Mitterand, Les Mots français (Paris, PUF, (Que sais-je?) (6th ed., 1981)
A. Sauvageot, Portrait du vocabulaire français (Paris, Larousse, 1964)
H. Walter, L'avenir des mots français venus d'ailleurs (Paris, R. Laffont, 1997)
H. Wise, The Vocabulary of Modern French (London, Routledge, 1997)

Literary Critical Works

The following works of criticism will give a useful introduction to the prescribed literary texts.

Renaud de Beaujeu

Alice M. Colby-Hall, 'Frustration and Fulfilment: the double ending of the Bel Inconnu', Yale French Studies 67 (1984), pp. 120-134
Le Chevalier et la Merveille dans Le Bel Inconnu ou Le beau jeu de Renaut, ed. Jean Dufournet (Paris: Champion, 1996)
Simon Gaunt, Gender and Genre in Medieval French Literature (Cambridge: CUP, 1995), pp. 103-13

Ronsard

Jean M. Fallon, Voice and Vision in Ronsard's 'Les Sonnets pour Helene' (New York, etc.: Peter Lang, 1993)
Leonard Forster, The Icy Fire: Five Studies in European Petrarchism (Cambridge: CUP, 1969), ch. 1
Gilbert Gadoffre, Ronsard (Paris: Seuil, 1994)
Donald Stone, Ronsard's Sonnet Cycles (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966)
Ronsard the Poet, ed. Terence Cave (London: Methuen, 1973), chap. 2, Grahame Castor, 'Petrarchism and the quest for beauty', chap. 3, A.H.T. Levi, 'The role of neoplatonism'.
Ronsard in Cambridge, ed. Philip Ford and Gillian Jondorf (Cambridge: Cambridge French Colloquia, 1986), chap. 6, Malcolm Quainton, chap. 9, Christine Scollen-Jimack, chap. 10, Elizabeth Guild, chap. 11, Gillian Jondorf, chap. 12, Dorothy Gabe Coleman

Racine

[* = introductory]

BARTHES, Roland, Sur Racine (Paris: Seuil, 1960)
*FRANCE, Peter, Racine's Rhetoric (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965)
HAWCROFT, Michael, Word as Action: Racine, Rhetoric and Theatrical Language (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992)
*JAMES, Edward and JONDORF, Gillian, Racine: 'Phèdre', Landmarks of World Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994)
KNIGHT, Roy (ed.), Racine: Modern Judgements, ed. by Roy Knight (London: Macmillan, 1969)
*MOURGUES, Odette de, Racine, or the Triumph of Relevance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967). (Also in French as Autonomie de Racine, Paris: Corti, 1967).
PHILLIPS, Henry, Racine: Language and Theatre (Durham: Durham Modern Languages Series, 1994)
PARISH, Richard, '"Un calme si funeste": some types of silence in Racine', French Studies 34 (1980), 385-400
PARISH, Richard, Racine: The Limits of Tragedy (Paris, Seattle, Tübingen: PFSCL, 1993)

Laclos

Peter Brooks, The Novel of Wordliness (Princeton, 1969)
Joan Dejean, Literary Fortifications (Princeton, 1992)
Yale French Studies, no. 94, Libertinage and Modernity (1999)
Susan K. Jackson, 'In Search of a Female Voice', in Writing the Female Voice: Essays on Epistolary Literature, ed. Elizabeth Goldsmith (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1989)
Ronald Rosbottom, 'Boredom and Meaning: A reading of Laclos' Liaisons dangereuses', French Forum, 16, 2 (Spring 1978), 11-18
Philip Stewart, 'Aspects de texture verbale dans Les Liaisons dangereuses', Revue de l'histoire littéraire de la France, 82 (1982), 547-58
T. Todorov, 'Choderlos de Laclos et la theéorie du récit', Tel Quel, 27 (1966), 17-28

Zola

Susan Harrow, 'Thérè Raquin: animal passion and the brutality of reading', in The Cambridge Companion to Zola, ed. by Brian Nelson (CUP, 2007), pp. 105-20.
Russell Cousins, Zola: Thérèse Raquin (London: Grant & Cutler, 1992) Critical Guides to French Texts 95
Colette Becker, chapter on Thérèse Raquin in Les Apprentissages de Zola (PUF, 1993), pp. 324-65
Henri Mitterand, 'Une anthropologie mythique: le système des personnages dans Thérèse Raquin et Germinal', in Le Discours du Roman (PUF, 1980)
Michelle E. Bloom, 'The Aesthetics of Guilt: Crime Scenes and Punitive Portraits in Zola' Thérèse Raquin', Dalhousie French Studies (vol. 58), Spring 2002, pp. 26-38
François-Marie Mourad, 'Thérèse Raquin, roman expérimental', Cahiers Naturalistes (vol. 84), 2010, pp. 157-164
Nicholas White, 'Naturalism', The Cambridge History of French Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2011), ed. B. Burgwinkle, N. Hammond, E. Wilson, pp. 522-30
Claire White, 'Zola and Freud: Spent Energy and Thérèse Raquin', Romanic Review, 2011 (102.3-4), 349-68 http://lion.chadwyck.co.uk/contents/abl_toc/RomanicReview/20110501.jsp

Varda

Sandy Flitterman Lewis, To Desire Differently: Feminism and the French Cinema (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996 [expanded edition]). See pp. 215-320 on Varda.
Jill Forbes, 'Gender and Space in Cléo de 5 à 7', Studies in French Cinema, Vol. 2, No. 2, pp.83-89
Valerie Orpen, Cléo de 5 à 7 (London: I.B. Tauris, 2007 [French Film Guides])
Alison Smith, Agnès Varda (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998) [a useful study of the director, referring throughout to Cléo de 5 à 7]
Agnès Varda, Cléo de 5 à 7: scénario (Paris: Gallimard, 1962) [screenplay]
Agnès Varda, Varda par Agnès (Paris: Editions Cahiers du Cinéma, 1994) [the director's study of her own career, with many images]
Sarah Cooper, Selfless Cinema? Ethics and French Documentary (London: Legenda, 2006). See pp. 77-90 on Varda as documentary filmmaker.

Last updated: July 2009