Università Roma Tre

Literature and Society in the French XIXth Century.

Exile writers (from Hugo to Zola); authors and works that are subject to judicial proceedings (Baudelaire, Flaubert); an important rethinking of the role of poetry and literature (from "art pour l'art" to "J'accuse!"): the relationship of XIXth century French literature to society is complex and multifaceted. The course will propose several itineraries through the way novelists have conceived that relationship in their works and their theoretical reflections.

Course Materials

Overview
Lagarde et Michard, XIXe siècle, Paris, Bordas, qualsiasi ed.
J.-Y. Tadié, Introduction à la vie littéraire du XIXe siècle, Paris, Colin, 2004.

Essays on the Novel:
Il Romanzo francese dell’Ottocento, a cura di A.M. Scaiola, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 2008.
M. Raimond, Le Roman depuis la Révolution, qualsiasi ed., chap. 1-2-3.

Texts
Stendhal, Le Rouge et le Noir
Flaubert, Madame Bovary
Zola, L’assommoir

Further readings / Critical bibliography
H. de Balzac, Le Père Goriot, qualsiasi ed.
C. Ginzburg, “L’aspra verità. Una sfida di Stendhal agli storici”, in Id., Il filo e le tracce, Milano, Feltrinelli, 2006.
G. Sapiro, La responsabilité de l’écrivain. Littérature, droit et morale en France (XIXe-XXe siècle), Paris, Seuil, 2011, deuxième partie (“La conquête de l’autonomie littéraire sous le Second Empire”).
G. Philippe et J. Piat, La langue littéraire, Paris, Fayard, 2009, chap. 8 (“L’invention de la prose”) et 9 (“Émile Zola et la langue littéraire vers 1890”).