Spring 2015

Worldliness and Otherworldliness

Listed in: French, as FREN-339

Formerly listed as: FREN-39

Faculty

Rosalina M. de la Carrera (Section 01)

Description

Many eighteenth-century writers imagined and invented other, better societies. To attenuate their criticisms of the social, political, and religious structures of the ancien régime, they had recourse to the viewpoint of fictional "outsiders" who arrive in France as if for the first time and describe what they see in minute and telling detail. We will analyze the role that these "other" worlds and the "otherworldly" point of view played in the development of eighteenth-century thought and literature, as well as some of the repercussions that these questions have had in twentieth-century thought. Readings will include Montesquieu's Lettres persanes, Rousseau's Discours sur l'origine de l'inégalité, Diderot's Supplément au Voyage de Bougainville, and Madame de Graffigny's Lettres d'une Péruvienne, as well as Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents and a selection of essays by Claude Lévi-Strauss. Conducted in French.

Requisite:  One of the following--FREN 207, 208, 311, or equivalent. Spring semester. Professor de la Carrera.

FREN 339 - L/D

Section 01
M 11:00 AM - 11:50 AM CHAP 101
W 11:00 AM - 11:50 AM CHAP 101
F 11:00 AM - 11:50 AM CHAP 101

ISBN Title Publisher Author(s) Comment Book Store Price
Civilization and Its Discontents/Standard Edition W.W. Norton, 2010 Freud Amherst Books TBD
Discours sur l’origine de l’inégalité Paris: Fernand Nathan, 2009 Rousseau Amherst Books TBD
Letteres d'une Peruvienne New York: MLA, 1993 de Graffigny Amherst Books TBD
Lettres persanes Paris: Larousse, 2011 Montesquieu Amherst Books TBD
Manon Lescaut Paris: Larousse, 2008 Prevost Amherst Books TBD
Supplement au Voyage de Bougainville Paris: Folio/Gallimard, 2002 Diderot Amherst Books TBD
Voyage autour du monde Paris: Larousse, 2010 Bougainville Amherst Books TBD

These books are available locally at Amherst Books.

Offerings

Other years: Offered in Spring 2008, Fall 2009, Spring 2012, Spring 2015, Spring 2017, Spring 2023