Università Roma Tre

Literature and Society in France, 19th-20th Century.

Exile writers (from Hugo to Zola); authors and works that are subject to judicial proceedings (from Baudelaire and Flaubert to Brasillach); an important rethinking of the role of poetry and literature (from "art pour l'art" and "J'accuse!", to Sartre’s “engagement”): the relationship of 19th-20th Century French literature to society is complex and multifaceted. The course will propose several itineraries through the way novelists and poets have conceived that relationship in their works and their theoretical reflections.

Course Materials

Overview
Lagarde et Michard, XIXe siècle, Paris, Bordas, qualsiasi ed.
J. W. Burrow, La crisi della ragione. Il pensiero europeo 1848-1914, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2002: prologo, chap. 2-4-5.

I. Novel
Texts – Select three texts among:
H. de Balzac, Le Père Goriot
Stendhal, Le Rouge et le Noir
Flaubert, Madame Bovary
Zola, L’Assommoir
Proust, Du côté de chez Swann

Further readings / Critical bibliography – Select three texts among:
G. Lukacs, Balzac et le réalisme français, Paris, Maspero, 1979 [1935].
F. Moretti, Atlante del romanzo europeo, Torino, Einaudi, 1997.
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”).
M. Bertini, L’ombra di Vautrin. Proust lettore di Balzac, Roma, Carocci, 2019.


II. Poetry
La poesia francese 1814-1914, a cura di L. Pietromarchi, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 2012.
Texts
C. Baudelaire, I fiori del male, trad. di G. Caproni e commento di L. Pietromarchi, Venezia, Marsilio, 2008 (a selection of poems).
A selection of poems by other authors will be provided during the class.
Critical bibliography – Select two texts among:
M. Raymond, De Baudelaire au surréalisme, qualsiasi ed., “Introduction”.
G. Poulet, La poésie éclatée, qualsiasi ed.
J. Starobinski, La Mélancolie au miroir, Paris, Julliard, 1989.