FREN 371 - Nineteenth-Century French Poetry and Poetics

This course explores the blossoming of new poetic forms and changing conceptions of poetry and the role of the poet in the years spanning the romantic, Parnassian, and symbolist movements. Through close readings, we will develop a broad understanding of French versification and prosody, but we will also study and discuss various practices and trends that transformed the composition, the diffusion, and even the reading of poetry in this period: the work of translation; the increased circulation of non-Western texts; the dialogue between poetry and other arts such as music and painting; women’s effort to undermine the gendering of the canon; the mythologization of the poet as prophet, seer, flaneur, or poète maudit; revolutionary politics; the expansion of the press; and so forth. Works studied include poems by Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, Alphonse de Lamartine, Victor Hugo, Gérard de Nerval, Louis Bertrand, Charles Baudelaire, Louisa Siefert, Judith Gautier, Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, and Stéphane Mallarmé. Conducted in French.

Unit(s): 1
Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
Prerequisite(s): FREN 212 or equivalent
Instructional Method: Conference
Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
Not offered: 2024-25
Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):

Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).