In this First-Year Seminar students will study an array of literary chef-d'oeuvres originally written in French, from the seventeenth to the twenty-first centuries, alongside and against their respective cinematic adaptations. These novels and their adaptations will allow us to think about notions of canon formation (i.e., how do we define, and who decides, what a "masterpiece" is?); content and form, and how they relate to prose narrative and to the moving image; genre and narrative; the uses of history in fiction; censorship, controversy, and scandal; gender, sex, and class; and how these texts have been and continue to be read, used, adapted, translated, and transformed from their time of publication to the present day. Students will have the opportunity to write both academically and creatively. Students who have sufficient knowledge of French will be able to read the texts in their original language and have discussions and written assignments in French by enrolling in the 0.5 CR Cultures and Languages Across the Curriculum (CLAC) course linked to this seminar. (See the FREN 253F course description for the eligibility requirements to enroll in the CLAC course.) |