FREN 355 - Cross-Currents in French Culture

Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)

Topic for 2016/17b: Yesterday and Today: Reinventing the Classics. From the beginning of time, storytellers and writers have turned to popular tales, myths, and stories with the express goal of modernizing or even subverting them. In this course, students read the original versions and their modern adaptations, analyze a variety of critical and literary theories of reinterpretation and appropriation, and write their own 21st-century adaptations. Authors studied represent different historical periods, cultures, and genres. They may include: Sophocles and Anouilh (Antigone); Shakespeare and Césaire (Une Tempête); Racine and Azoulai (Titus n’aimait pas Bérénice); Perrault, Pommerat (Cendrillon), Nothomb (Barbe bleue), and Ben Jelloun (La Petite à la burqa rouge); Camus and Daoud (Meursault, contre-enquête). This seminar is meant for students interested in intertextuality, comparative analysis, and creative writing. Cynthia Kerr.

One 2-hour period.