French

82-90 Wall Street, 3rd floor, 432.4900
M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D.

Chair
Edwin Duval

Director of Graduate Studies
Ora Avni (82-90 Wall Street, Rm 322, 432.4902, ora.avni@yale.edu)

Professors
Ora Avni, Howard Bloch, Peter Brooks, Edwin Duval, Shoshana Felman, Thomas Kavanagh, Christopher L. Miller

Associate Professor
Susan Weiner

Assistant Professors
Mark Burde, Catherine Labio, Farid Laroussi, Donia Mounsef, Jean-Jacques Poucel, Julia Prest

Fields of Study
Fields include French literature, criticism, theory, and culture from the early Middle Ages to the present, and the French-language literatures of Africa, the Caribbean, and the Maghreb.

Special Admissions Requirements
A thorough command of French is expected, as well as a good preparation in all fields of French literature. A strong background in at least one other foreign language is also expected. Applicants should submit a twenty-page writing sample in French.

Special Requirements for the Ph.D. Degree
(1) Candidates will have to demonstrate a reading knowledge of Latin and a second language by passing department-administered examinations, Yale undergraduate courses, or Yale Summer Language Institute courses with at least a B or High Pass grade. Students must fulfill the Latin requirement before the beginning of their third term of study. The other language requirement must be satisfied before the beginning of the fifth term, and before the oral qualifying examination. (2) During the first two years of study, students normally take sixteen term courses. These must include Old French and at least two graduate-level term courses outside the department. They may include one term of a language course (Latin or other) taken as a means of fulfilling one of the language requirements, and as many as four graduate-level term courses outside the department. A grade of Honors must be obtained in at least four of the sixteen courses, two or more of which must be in courses offered by the department. (3) A qualifying oral examination normally takes place during the fifth term or, in some special cases, no later than the end of the sixth term. The examination is designed to demonstrate students' mastery of the French language, their knowledge and command of selected topics in literature, and their capacity to present and discuss texts and issues. (4) After having successfully passed the qualifying oral examination, students are required to submit a dissertation prospectus for approval, normally no later than the end of the term following the oral examination.

In order to be admitted to candidacy for the Ph.D., students must complete all predissertation requirements, including the prospectus. Students must be admitted to candidacy by the end of the seventh term.

Teaching is considered an integral part of the preparation for the Ph.D. degree and all students are required to teach for at least one year. Opportunities to teach undergraduate courses normally become available to candidates in their third year, after consideration of the needs of the department and of the students' capacity both to teach and to fulfill their final requirements. Prior to teaching, students take a language-teaching methodology course.

Combined Ph.D. Program
The French department also offers, in conjunction with the program in African American Studies, a combined Ph.D. in French and African American Studies. The program is most appropriate for students who intend to concentrate in and write a dissertation on the literature of the francophone Caribbean.

Students in the combined degree program are subject to all the requirements for a Ph.D. in French. In addition, they must complete two core courses in African American Studies and a third-year colloquium. For this degree, the French department's requirement for a language in addition to Latin will normally be filled by demonstrating reading competence in a Creole language of the Caribbean or in Spanish. The students' oral examinations normally include two topics of African American content. The dissertation prospectus must be approved by the director of graduate studies both in the French department and in African American Studies, and final approval of the dissertation must come from both the program and the department. For further details see African American Studies.

Master's Degrees
M.Phil. See Graduate School requirements. Alternatively, the Department of French offers, in conjunction with the Medieval Studies program, a joint M.Phil. degree. For further details, see Medieval Studies.

M.A. (en route to the Ph.D.). Students enrolled in the Ph.D. program may petition for the M.A. degree after a minimum of one year of study in residence, upon completion of the Latin requirement, and of eight courses, of which at least six are in French. Two grades of Honors in French graduate courses are required.

Program materials are available upon request to the Administrative Assistant to the Director of Graduate Studies, French Department, Yale University, PO Box 208251, New Haven CT 06520-8251.

Courses
All classes are taught in French unless otherwise noted.

FREN 610a, Old French. Howard Bloch. W 3.30–5.20
An introduction to the historical grammar of Old French through reading, translation, and discussion of some of its major literary forms, including epic, romance, allegory, fabliau, and drama.

FREN 682b, Stylistics and Rhetoric. Ora Avni. Th 1.30–3.20
Practice in oral and written presentation of ideas for all occasions: thesis prospectus, proposals for colloquia or grants, twenty-minute talks, first class meetings, job interviews, etc. Practical work in oral and written French, including phonetics. Daily writing in French.

FREN 713b, Mythology and Renewal in French Theater. Donia Mounsef. W 3.30–5.20
This course looks at modern stage adaptations of classical theatrical myths as a form of renewal, denial, or distortion of a tradition and examines the structural, thematic, and ideological specificity of the adapted text (including parody and pastiche). Readings from Anouilh, Molière, Racine, Césaire, Cixous, Cocteau, Sartre, and Ionesco; theoretical readings from Ricoeur, Domenach, Barthes, Genette, and Lassalle.

FREN 784b, Literature and Psychoanalysis. Shoshana Felman. W 1.30–3.20
How has psychoanalysis revolutionized our conception of knowledge and of man? What are the psychoanalytic concepts that inform modern culture? How does psychoanalysis give us tools for understanding and interpreting literary works? The course explores these questions through selected readings in Freud, Lacan, Winnicott, Klein, Kohut, and others. Emphasis on Freud's and Lacan's understanding of the self as well as of society and culture, through an illumination of the relation of desire to repression, of life to death, of fiction to reality. Among the notions discussed are theories of sexuality, narcissism, identification, dreams, repetition, death drive, mourning, trauma, memory, and history. In English. Also CPLT 784b.

FREN 788a, Literature, Film, and Justice. Shoshana Felman. W 1.30–3.20
A study of scenes of judgment in literature, film, and history, focusing on literature's ways of dealing with injustice in various legal, historical, political, and/or psychoanalytic circumstances. Topics include the opposition between legal justice and literary justice, and the relation between evidence, truth, and judgment. The course also looks at some historical trials reflected on by literary writers. Texts by poets, storytellers, and dramatists such as Kleist, Balzac, Flaubert, Zola, Mallarmé, Celan, Camus, Blanchot, Beckett, Brecht, Melville, Forster, Woolf, and Morrison, and critics such as Benjamin, Arendt, Derrida, Lyotard, Foucault, Barthes, Levinas, and Lanzmann. Films such as Night and Fog, The Sorrow and the Pity, Shoah. In English. Also CPLT 931a.

FREN 819b, Le Roman de la Rose. Howard Bloch. T 1.30–3.20
An overall study of the sources, authorship, manuscripts, and illuminations, French and foreign influences, the "Debate," and scholarly tradition, along with a critical reading of Guillaume de Lorris's and Jean de Meun's portions of the Roman de la Rose.

FREN 823b, Poésie Lyrique à la Renaissance. Edwin Duval. W 10.30–12.20
An overview of lyric poetry as it evolved from the early sixteenth to the early seventeenth century, with an emphasis on close readings of representative poems. Works by Marot, Scève, Labé, Du Bellay, Ronsard, D'Aubigné, Malherbe, and Théophile de Viau.

FREN 862b, The Enlightenment and Its Legacy. Catherine Labio. M 1.30–3.20
Seminar devoted to the French Enlightenment in its broader Euro-American context. Particular attention is paid to its epistemological organization, questions pertaining to the nature of civil society, ties with England and North America, the French Revolution and the reactions to it both in France and abroad, and the Counter-Enlightenment, as well as to the applicability of Enlightenment thought to key contemporary social, political, and economic issues. Works by Montesquieu, Condillac, Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau, the physiocrats, Laclos, Kant, Gouges, Horkheimer, Foucault, and Lyotard, among others. In French and English. Also CPLT 762b.

FREN 864a, Novel and Society in Eighteenth-Century France. Thomas Kavanagh. M 10.30–12.20
This seminar focuses on the growing importance and diverse forms of the novel in eighteenth-century France. Placing the novel in its historical, cultural, and literary contexts, we aim to understand this form as a genre whose development both reflects and consolidates the emerging forms of consciousness and sociability that distinguish the Enlightenment. Works by Montesquieu, Prévost, Crébillon, Jourdan, Denon, Graffigny, Charrière, Laclos, and Diderot. In French.

FREN 870b, Hazard and Culture. Thomas Kavanagh. M 10.30–12.20
Using French literary works from the Middle Ages to the present, as well as paintings and films, this seminar examines the changing idea of chance and its dialectic with culture. We focus on representations of the gambler as a figure whose position at the juncture of chaos and order questions society's cosmological, ethical, economic, and psychological assumptions. Our concern is with how the gambler's embrace of chance relates to agency, causality, and order as well as their ethical implications of identity, responsibility, and freedom. Works by Bodel, Pascal, Regnard, Prévost, Casanova, Diderot, Laméry, Saurin, Laplace, Mérimée, Hoffmann, Balzac, Barbey d'Aurévilly, Bourget, Borges, Serres, Rosset as well as films by Melville and Demy. In French.

FREN 895a, "Character"–"Person"–"Identity." Peter Brooks. T 1.30–3.20
The course attempts to talk about what we mean by "character," in relation to such other terms as "subject," "person," "identity," "self." It draws on some material from linguistics, psychoanalysis, moral philosophy, and law. Readings are mainly narratives, eighteenth to twentieth century, and will probably include: Rousseau, Confessions; Nathalie Z. Davis, The Return of Martin Guerre; Balzac, Le Colonel Chabert; Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White; Gustave Flaubert, L'Education sentimentale; George Eliot, Daniel Deronda; Henry James, The Beast in the Jungle and The Jolly Corner; and Marguerite Duras, Le ravissement de Lol V. Stein. In English. Also CPLT 864a.

FREN 910a, Reading/Writing (after) Mallarmé. Jean-Jacques Poucel. T 10.30–12.20
This course juxtaposes close readings of Stéphane Mallarmé's poetry and prose with studies in its reception, including perspectives in psychoanalysis, structuralism, and deconstruction. Secondary readings include Blanchot, Mauron, Richard, and Derrida.

FREN 941a, Le Récit. Ora Avni. Th 1.30–3.20
An examination of nineteenth-century French short story with emphasis on the "subject" (narrator, tone, "reader") and narratological techniques. Some historical perspective. Tentative readings: Constant, Balzac, Flaubert, Gautier, Barbey d'Aurevilly, Michelet, Maupassant, Mérimée, Hugo, Nerval, Loti, Lunel, Daudet.

FREN 946a, Postcolonial Theory and Its Literature. Christopher L. Miller. Th 10.30–12.20
A survey of theories relevant to colonial and postcolonial literature and culture. The course focuses on theoretical models (Orientalism, hybridity, métissage, créolité, "minor literature"), but also gives attention to the literary texts from which they are derived (francophone and anglophone). Readings from Said, Bhabha, Spivak, Mbembe, Amselle, Glissant, Deleuze, Guattari. Taught in English. Also AFAM 846a, AFST 746a, CPLT 725a.

FREN 948b, From One Congo to Another: Literature and Culture in Central Africa. Christopher L. Miller. Th 10.30–12.20
An interdisciplinary approach to two nations, with a primary focus on literature but with reference to history, anthropology, film, and other fields. How the two Congos evolved side by side, through a history of genocide, colonialism, dictatorship, and war; the emergence of a rich literary tradition. Readings of Conrad, Tintin, Gide, Bemba, Dongala, Lopes, Sony Labou Tansi, Tchicaya, Mudimbe, Ngal. Also AFST 748b.

FREN 952a, Popular Culture, culture populaire, politique culturelle. Susan Weiner. W 10.30–12.20
Investigation of the history, theories, and practices of these three interrelated aspects of French culture in the twentieth century. Readings from authors including Malraux, de Certeau, Bourdieu, as well as fiction, film, and song.

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