Module description
This is the first of a pair modules that build towards an overarching understanding of ‘cultures of the French-speaking world’ in their historical and geographical diversity. It focuses on a range of primary materials in French that are diverse in various senses, notably: chronologically, in genre/medium, and in terms of the origins and identities of the authors/filmmakers. Students will be expected to read and study these works intensively in order to participate fully in seminar discussion, and to get the most from lectures offering a framework of historical contexts and critical approaches. The module aims to ease the transition from school to university through a focused introduction to materials and skills of critical analysis, in writing and more widely, that will form the basis of more advanced study in subsequent years.
It is designed for students who have not reached the equivalent of A-level standard in French, with French-language materials studied in translation. (There is a sister module, 4ALLF001, for students with A-level French or equivalent, in which texts are read in the original.)
Students for whom the module is not compulsory may take this module alone, without its second-semester counterpart (4ALLF004).
Assessment details
500- word preparatory summary exercise (15%), 1500-word essay (85%)
Learning outcomes
Students will be able to demonstrate intellectual, transferable, and practical skills appropriate to a Level 4 module and in particular should:
- Have detailed knowledge of a range of significant French texts (of various sorts, which may include film).
- Be able to write well-organised analytic essays/commentaries on selected texts.
- Understand and be able to use the basic analytic vocabulary and procedures of academic criticism.
- Have built some of the foundations of an understanding of French literary/cultural history over several centuries and across different countries/cultures, including a sense of some of the major genres of French literature.
- Be able to make informed choices about intellectual pathways in the second , third and final years of our degree programmes in French.
Teaching pattern
1-hour lecture and 1-hour seminar, weekly
Suggested reading list
Core texts
- Mohammed Dib, ‘Rencontres’ [Encounters]
- Annie Ernaux, La Femme gelée [A Frozen Woman]
- Frantz Fanon, extract from L’an V de la Révolution [A Dying Colonialism]
- George Sand, Indiana
- Medieval lais (Marie de France, Jean Renart)