The French Short Story: from Voltaire to Maupassant (Level 5)

Overview

• Credit value: 30 credits at Level 5
• Convenor: Damian Catani
• Tutors: Damian Catani, Dr Ann Lewis
• Assessment: a 2500-word essay (50%) and 1.5-hour take-home test (50%)

Module description

In this module we place the French short story in its intellectual and social context, thereby offering you a snapshot of the central aesthetic and ideological concerns of a range of important eighteenth- and nineteenth-century authors. Not only do the authors studied therefore allow us to map the evolution of the short story as a genre in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but this genre in turn sheds valuable light on a particularly rich and rapidly changing period of French cultural and social history.

Indicative syllabus

• Voltaire, ‘Zadig’, ‘Micromégas’, ‘Candide’ (any complete edition of each short story)
• Diderot, ‘Ceci n’est pas un conte’ [This is Not a Tale] and ‘Madame de la Carlière’
• Richard Hobbs (ed.) From Balzac to Zola: Selected Short Stories (Bristol Classical Press, 1992)
• Maupassant, ‘Le Horla’ (any edition)

Learning objectives

By the end of this module, you will be able to:

• demonstrate relevant, factual knowledge about the French and Francophone texts, contexts and issues under discussion
• evaluate the prescribed texts at a thematic as well as linguistic and stylistic level
• work within historical and theoretical frameworks in the interpretation of the prescribed texts.