Courses in French
Note: This page contains all of the regular courses taught by this department. Not all courses are offered every year. Check the searchable schedule to see which courses are being offered in the upcoming semester.
FREN 111Y Intensive Introductory French
Credit: 0.75
This is a year-long course offering the equivalent of three semesters of conventional language study. Work for the course includes required practice sessions with an apprentice teacher (AT), which will be scheduled at the beginning of the semester. Class meetings and AT practice sessions are supplemented with online activities and written homework. Work in class focuses primarily on developing listening comprehension and speaking skills while reinforcing vocabulary acquisition and the use of grammatical structures. Written exercises, short compositions, and elementary reading materials serve to develop writing and reading skills and promote in-class discussion. There are normally eight to nine hours of class instruction in the first semester (including AT sessions). This course is intended for students who have had no prior experience with French or who are placed in FREN 111Y-112Y on the basis of a placement exam administered during Orientation. Offered every year.
FREN 112Y Intensive Introductory French
Credit: 0.75
This course is a continuation of the first semester of intensive introductory French. During the second semester, the class continues the study of the fundamentals of French with the addition of more literary and cultural materials, introduced with a view toward further developing reading comprehension and writing ability, expanding vocabulary, and enhancing cultural awareness.
FREN 213Y Intermediate French
Credit: 0.5
This is an intermediate-level course open to students who have successfully completed FREN 111Y-112Y or who qualify by virtue of a placement test. It is designed for students interested in developing their ability to speak, write, and read French. The course includes a comprehensive grammar review and short cultural and literary readings, which will serve as points of departure for class discussion. Course requirements include attendance at one to two extra discussion sections per week with a language assistant. Attendance at a weekly French table is strongly encouraged.
FREN 214Y Intermediate French
Credit: 0.5
This course is the continuation of the first semester of intermediate French. Please see the description for FREN 213Y.
FREN 321 Advanced Composition and Conversation
Credit: 0.5
This course is designed to provide advanced students with the opportunity to strengthen their abilities to write, read, and speak French. The conversation component of the course will focus on the discussion of articles from the current French and Francophone press, films, other media, and Web sites, and on developing the fluency in French to perform linguistically and culturally appropriate tasks. The composition component will seek to improve the ability to write clearly and coherently in French. In order to foster these goals, the course will also provide a review of selected advanced grammatical structures and work on literary excerpts.
FREN 322 Advanced Composition and Conversation
Credit: 0.5
The purpose of this course is to provide advanced students with the opportunity to strengthen their abilities to write, read, and speak French. A companion to the first-semester course FREN 321 (not a prerequisite for this course), FREN 322 will focus more specifically on written expression and a review of French grammatical structures, but will nonetheless include activities that build on the skills practiced in FREN 321 (conversation, reading, listening). Activities designed to enhance grammatical accuracy and expression in writing will include exercises focusing on specific grammatical points as well as translations, discussions in French followed by compositions of increasing length relevant to the topics covered, and the maintenance of a journal to practice written expression in a less formal context. Coursework will also include assignments related to oral expression.
FREN 323 Approaches to French Literature I
Credit: 0.5
In this course, we will examine representative texts--lyric poems, plays, short stories, and novels--from the Middle Ages to the French Revolution. In addition to gaining a greater understanding of French literary history and of related social and philosophical trends, students will develop skills necessary for close reading, explication de texte, and oral discussion. We will read complete texts rather than excerpts whenever possible. It is especially recommended for students with little or no previous exposure to French literature. The course will be conducted in French.
FREN 324 Approaches to French Literature II
Credit: 0.5
The purpose of this course is to introduce the student to the study of three major literary genres--poetry, theater, and the novel--from the French Revolution to the twentieth century. We will do so by reading the works of authors such as Hugo, Baudelaire, Lamartine, Balzac, Mallarmé, Gide, Cocteau, Camus, and Sartre. The course seeks to help students gain a deeper understanding of French literary history and of its relationship to major social and philosophical movements. We will see how the literature of each century reflects important societal and intellectual debates of the time. The course will continue the development of the skills of literary analysis, guided discussion, and essay writing in French. This course will be conducted in French.
FREN 325 Contes et Nouvelles: Exploring French Short Fiction
Credit: 0.5
Many of the best-loved and most original writers in French--Voltaire, Flaubert, Maupassant, Camus, Yourcenar, to name a few--experimented with short forms of fiction while simultaneously cultivating other literary genres. This course will focus on short works of fiction as a means of exploring both the French literary tradition and the parameters of a specific genre. It will include examples of the folktale, the fairy tale, the philosophical tale, the realist short story, the fantastic tale, the existentialist short story, the fragmentary narrative in the style of the "nouveau roman," and more recent francophone fiction. Selections from theoretical works, such as Propp's Morphology of the Folktale and Todorov's Introduction à la littérature fantastique, will also help guide our understanding of the genres of short fiction. This course will be conducted in French, with occasional theoretical readings in English.
Instructor: Cowles
FREN 328 Modern French Civilization
Credit: 0.5
We will examine some of the social, cultural, and political issues in contemporary France, as well as their historical context, by analyzing representative films and texts from the twentieth century. Films and themes may include La Grande Illusion, Jules et Jim, Lacombe, Lucien and World Wars I and II; Coup de Torchon, Indochine, and the colonial experience; A Bout de souffle, Milou en mai, and the fifties and sixties; the impact of immigration; and several other films and themes. Students will be required to view eight to ten films outside of class. We will also read a textbook on contemporary France to supplement the films, and students will be required to complete an independent research project on a topic related to class discussions. The course will be conduced in French.
FREN 337 French Drama Workshop
Credit: 0.5
This course is designed to build on the oral and written skills of students at the advanced level. Students will undertake critical writing, creative writing, and performance activities. Coursework will also include attention to pronunciation to increase sensitivity to phonetics, intonation, and expressiveness in French. Students will regularly perform improvisations, short scenes they write themselves, and scenes from authors such as Molière, Ionesco, and Camus. The largest single component of the course will be the analysis, interpretation, and staging of a French play or series of scenes in the original.
Instructor: Cowles
FREN 343 Seventeenth-Century French Literature
Credit: 0.5
The works of French literature and thought in the seventeenth century embody what the French call "le classicisme": the golden age of the national literary tradition. The belief still persists that French literature of the period, such as Racine's tragedies or Boileau's Art poétique, rivaled the great works of antiquity. This course will introduce students to the literature and intellectual history of seventeenth-century France and will examine the concept of the Baroque, the ideals of the classical aesthetic which succeeded it, and the tensions that may lie beneath the classical facade. Readings will include such works as Pascal's Pensées, plays by Corneille, Molière, and Racine, selected poems by La Fontaine, and what is often considered the first psychological novel, La Princesse de Clèves by Madame de Lafayette.
Instructor: Blacker
FREN 345 Heart and Reason: Eighteenth-Century French Prose
Credit: 0.5
We will explore the competing forces of la raison and la sensibilité as they affect developing notions of the self and of individual freedom in eighteenth-century France. Our readings will include some of the major works of Enlightenment thought, representative of several genres: philosophical narratives, plays, novels, and autobiographical texts by such authors as Montesquieu, Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau, and Laclos. Our considerations of the tensions between the heart and reason will also provide some glimpses of the underside of the French Enlightenment. The course will be conducted in French.
Instructor: Cowles
FREN 346 Romantics and Realists
Credit: 0.5
We will read major novels and plays produced during one of the most turbulent eras of French history, from the wake of the French Revolution to the establishment of France's first viable democratic regime, the Third Republic. Works by authors such as Stendhal, Hugo, Balzac, Flaubert, and Zola will provide us with a perspective on the social and political upheavals of the time. In addition to intrepreting these works in relation to their historical background, we will try to understand and compare the authors' aesthetics of literary creation, their understanding of the individual's role in society, and the opposition of idealism and material forces that they portray. This course will be conducted in French.
Instructor: Cowles
FREN 348 Twentieth-Century French Prose
Credit: 0.5
Though centered on the novel, this course examines various genres and their boundaries, including drama, short narrative, and film. Close readings of classic modern texts will serve to illuminate questions such as the role and nature of the subject, narrative coherence and incoherence, the incorporation of marginal voices into the literary mainstream, and the relationship between literature and modernism. These texts will be situated in historical and intellectual context. Authors studied may include Marcel Proust, Samuel Beckett, and Marguerite Duras. This course is designed to accommodate advanced students as well as those with little or no previous experience in French literature. This course is conducted in French.
FREN 350 Studies in the Early Lyric
Credit: 0.5
This course is designed to introduce students to the language, forms, images, and themes that characterize the French lyric, from the trouverès, troubadours, and trobairitz of the medieval period to the Pléiade of the sixteenth century. Poets to be read will include Marcabru, Bernard de Ventadorn, the Contessa di Dia, the Châtelain de Coucy, Thibaut de Champagne, Guillaume de Machaut, Christine de Pisan, Charles d'Orléans, François Villon, and Ronsard. All works will be read in their original form. The course will be conducted in French.
Instructor: Blacker
FREN 352 Baudelaire to Valéry
Credit: 0.5
We will explore the relationship between poetry and modernity, as well as learn techniques for the close reading of French poetic texts. Authors will include Rimbaud, Verlaine, and Mallarmé in addition to Baudelaire and Valéry. The literary and philosophic consequences of the development of a poetic language that rejects all reference to the outside world, striving toward the pure or absolute text, constitutes the primary focus of the course. The course will be conducted in French.
Instructor: Cowles
FREN 353 Myth and Meaning of the French Revolution
Credit: 0.5
Few events in world history were as cataclysmic as the French Revolution. The purpose of this course is to acquaint students with the basic events of the revolution and to expose them to the conflicting interpretations of those events, particularly as they are portrayed in literature and film. In so doing, the course will explore different authors' visions of history and the creation of a mythology surrounding the revolution. Discussion of fictional narratives will be enriched by allusions to revolutionary art and music in order to elucidate the role of symbol in political ideology. Readings will include selected essays and excerpts from historical narratives, as well as major works by Beaumarchais, Balzac, Hugo, and Anatole France. We will also discuss major feature films by directors Renoir, Wadja, Gance, and others. The course will be conducted in French.
Instructor: Cowles
FREN 354 The Arthurian Legend in Old French Literature and Film
Credit: 0.5
While the modern King Arthur is largely a character of English-speaking literature and film, the medieval Arthur was initially primarily, though not exclusively, a product of French verse and prose romances and Latin chronicles. This course will introduce students to medieval Arthurian literature through Old French texts of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, including two of Chreacute;tien de Troyes's verse romances Le Roman de Perceval ou le Conte du Graall and Lancelot ou le Chevalier de la Charrette and two prose texts from the so-called Vulgate or Lancelot-Grail cycle of prose romances, La Queste del Saint Graal and La Mort le Roi Artu. Students will be trained to read these texts in the original Old French while learning to analyze films in order to study comparatively with the literary texts some of the major filmic presentations of the Arthurian myth. Films will include Eric Rohmer's Perceval le Gallois, John Boorman's Excalibur, Robert Bresson's Lancelot du Lac and Monty Python and the Holy Grail, with showings to be arranged outside of class time. The course will be conducted in French; all work submitted for a grade will be in French. No prior reading knowledge of Old French is expected. Prerequisite: FREN 213Y-214Y or equivalent; FREN 321 or 322 recommended.
Instructor: Blacker
FREN 361 Symbolism to Surrealism and Beyond
Credit: 0.5
The period extending from the belle epoque to World War II saw the birth, ascendancy, and worldwide influence of French avant-garde poetry. We will study this phenomenon chronologically, beginning with the Symbolist "cult of literature" represented by poet Stéphane Mallarmé, moving on to "anti-literature" such as the Paris Dada movement, and ending with the Surrealist period, when the literary avant-garde established itself as a powerful institution in its own right. We will study poems and some shorter prose texts by a range of authors including Paul Valéry, Guillaume Apollinaire, Tristan Tzara, and André Breton. We will also discuss the relationship between literature and other arts such as painting and film. The course will be conducted in French.
Instructor: Guiney
FREN 493 Individual Study
Credit: 0.25-0.5
This course offers an opportunity to study on an individual basis in special-interest areas-- literary, cultural, or linguistic-- under the regular supervision of a faculty member. This course is normally available only to majors or, in unusual cases, to prospective majors. Prerequisites: permission of instructor and department chair.