Unit information: Victor Hugo and Nineteenth-Century France in 2016/17

Unit name	Victor Hugo and Nineteenth-Century France
Unit code	FREN20045
Credit points	20
Level of study	I/5
Teaching block(s)	Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24)
Unit director	Professor. Stephens
Open unit status	Not open
Pre-requisites	FREN10029
Co-requisites	None
School/department	Department of French
Faculty	Faculty of Arts

Description including Unit Aims

This unit surveys the cultural and socio-political history of nineteenth-century France through the eyes of its most iconic writer, Victor Hugo (1802-85). Hugo’s wide-ranging career as both an artist and a statesman provides a vast body of work that channels the aspirations and anxieties of this turbulent century. The unit takes examples of Hugo’s prose fiction, poetry, theatrical drama, visual artwork, photography, and essays in order to illustrate and investigate how Hugo engaged with questions of individual and social freedom in a century that experienced swift and sweeping change after the American and French Revolutions. Particular focus will be given to how Hugo’s championing of freedom, equality, and brotherhood as Revolutionary ideals relied upon a productive relationship between artistic creativity and political activism that has firmly embedded him in the French national consciousness today. The unit will in turn consider a number of Hugo’s most important causes in light both of their nineteenth-century contexts and their enduring relevance to modern French identity, including freedom of expression, the opposition to the death penalty, the abolition of slavery, and his dream of a ‘United States of Europe’. In these respects, the unit aims to:

• Work across the variety of different textual and visual outputs that make up Hugo’s career and consolidate his renown as one of modern France’s ‘great men’.
• Study the relationship between art and politics – and between elitist and popular culture – as it develops in nineteenth-century France.
• Introduce students to the hybrid nature of the French Romantic imagination as it is exemplified and problematized by Hugo.
• Deepen students’ understanding of the nineteenth century as a formative period in the construction of modern French identity.
• Broaden student skills acquired in Year 1 in understanding both the French language and various approaches to cultural inquiry.

Intended Learning Outcomes

Students will, at the end of the unit, be able to:

1. Demonstrate an understanding of the socio-political importance of art during the nineteenth century as epitomised by Victor Hugo.
2. Use a detailed knowledge of Hugo’s life and works to enhance that understanding of the period and to stress the ongoing relevance of his thinking to 21st-century France.
3. Work confidently within and across different forms of cultural output, primarily prose fiction, drama, poetry, visual art, and political oratory, as appropriate to Level I
4. Better understand the French language by engaging in detailed analysis of Hugo’s writing through both close reading and thematic discussion
5. Select and effectively synthesise relevant critical material and theoretical approaches for analysis.
6. Respond to questions or problems by presenting their independent judgements, as appropriate to Level I

Teaching Information

1 weekly lecture hour and one weekly seminar hour.

Assessment Information

One 1500-word commentary (25%)

one 2500-word essay (75%).

Both assessments will test ILOS 1-6.

Reading and References

The set material for study may vary from year to year, drawing on Hugo’s large body of works, but the following list is illustrative of the range that will be on offer (both textual and visual).

Primary Material:

Le Dernier jour d’un condamné (1829) – short story

Le Roi s’amuse (1832) – theatrical play

Les Contemplations (1856) – collection of poems

Quatrevingt-treize (1874) – novel

Selection of political essays and oratory, including the prefaces to Odes et ballades (1826-28), the preface

to Le Rhin (1842), ‘La Liberté de l’enseignement’ (1850), ‘John Brown’ (1859), & ‘Pour la Serbie’ (1876)

Selection of graphic works and photography (1840-1870), available online at BnF website and in Dessins de

Victor Hugo (ed. by Pierre Georgel, 1974)

Secondary / Introductory Reading:

Garval, Michael D., A Dream of Stone: Fame, Vision, and Monumentality in Nineteenth-Century French

Literary Culture (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2004); esp. the Introduction and Chapter 4.

Georgel, Pierre, La Gloire de Victor Hugo (Paris: Éditions de la Réunion des musées nationaux, 1985)

Pena-Ruiz, Henri & Jean-Paul Scot. Un Poète en politique: les combats de Victor Hugo (Paris: Flammarion,

2002)

Porter, Laurence M., Victor Hugo (New York: Twayne, 1999)

Prévost, Marie-Laure (ed.). Victor Hugo, l’homme-océan (Paris: BnF, 2002)

Stephens, Bradley, ‘Chateaubriand ou rien, Hugo et tout: Contemplating the Poet’s Posterity’, Dix-Neuf,

forthcoming July 2016 (pp. tbc)