Unit information: Writing the Everyday in 2016/17

Unit name	Writing the Everyday
Unit code	FREN20057
Credit points	20
Level of study	I/5
Teaching block(s)	Teaching Block 1 (weeks 1 - 12)
Unit director	Professor. Marianne Ailes
Open unit status	Not open
Pre-requisites	None
Co-requisites	None
School/department	Department of French
Faculty	Faculty of Arts

Description including Unit Aims

This unit explores the French intellectual and artistic preoccupation with the everyday in the second half of the twentieth century. We will examine ways of investigating, documenting, and reflecting on everyday life — the ordinary, the mundane, questions relating to the nature of experience in modern society, consumer culture, alienation, and the concepts of the quotidien and ‘la vie quotidienne’. The interdisciplinary demands of thinking about the everyday mean that this unit will introduce students to works from across a range of media and genres: from Roland Barthes’ theoretical reflections on everyday life, to Georges Perec’s first novel, a film by Jacques Tati, Annie Ernaux’s ‘diary entries’, and the depiction of Parisian streets in Jacques Réda’s poetry.

Aims:

• Examine the question of the everyday and to highlight its importance in twentieth-century French culture
• Develop students’ knowledge of the different cultural and socio-historical contexts in which French thinkers and artists engage with everyday life
• Familiarise students with a broad variety of twentieth-century works
• Develop students’ ability to articulate their arguments in front of their peer group
• Develop students’ research and writing abilities

Intended Learning Outcomes

At the end of the unit, students will be able to demonstrate intellectual, transferable, and practicable skills appropriate to level I. These include:

1. Detailed knowledge of the fictional, discursive, and theoretical primary texts on the syllabus
2. Understanding of the multiple ways of thinking critically about the everyday, and an ability to discuss the emerging consumer society of the 1960s, and the commodification of daily life in postwar France, with reference to relevant primary and secondary material
3. Ability to synthesise relevant critical material and to engage with theoretical ideas
4. Increased understanding of the French language, achieved through engaging in detailed analysis of material in French and by analysing its stylistic features

1. Ability to produce coherent, independent arguments that are well-referenced and well-structured in both essay and exam conditions, as appropriate to level I

Teaching Information

One weekly lecture and one weekly seminar

Assessment Information

Assessed essay of 2000 words (33%) and a 2 hour exam (67%) Testing ILO’s 1-5

Reading and References

Primary Reading:

Barthes, Roland, Mythologies (Paris: Points, 2014 [1957])

Ernaux, Annie, Journal du dehors (Paris: Gallimard Folio, 1996 [1993])

Perec, Georges, Les Choses: une histoire des années soixante (Paris: Éditions Julliard, 2015 [1965]); Tentative d’épuisement d’un lieu parisien (Paris: Christian Bourgeois, 1975)

Réda, Jacques, La Liberté des rues (Paris: Gallimard, 1997)

Film:

Tati, Jacques, Mon Oncle (1958)

Secondary / Introductory Reading:

Certeau, Michel de, L’Invention du quotidien, I, Arts de faire (Paris: Gallimard, 1980)

Everyday Life, ed. Alice Kaplan and Kristin Ross, Yale French Studies, 73 (1987)

Lefebvre, Henri, Critique de la vie quotidienne, I, Introduction, 2nd edn (Paris: L’Arche, 1958 [1947])

Highmore, Ben, Everyday Life and Cultural Theory: An Introduction (London and New York: Routledge, 2002)

--- ‘Introduction’, in Ben Highmore (ed.), The Everyday Life Reader (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), pp. 1–36

Ross, Kristin, Fast Cars, Clean Bodies: Decolonization and the Reordering of French Culture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996)

Sheringham, Michael, Everyday Life: Theories and Practices from Surrealism to the Present (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006)