Unit information: Realism and Experiment in 2013/14

Unit name	Realism and Experiment
Unit code	FREN30092
Credit points	20
Level of study	H/6
Teaching block(s)	Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24)
Unit director	Mr. McFarthing
Open unit status	Not open
Pre-requisites	None
Co-requisites	None
School/department	Department of French
Faculty	Faculty of Arts

Description including Unit Aims

Five fictional texts will be studied, with the aim of showing how authors of the period progressively challenged the norms and conventions of what had become known as realism. Verne, Flaubert and Maupassant are commonly considered to be classic exponents of the realist novel, yet each of the chosen texts subverts and questions the genre, either by covert manipulation of the conventions, or by overt reference to the notion of realist fiction within the narrative itself. Proust, an admirer and a critic of the nineteenth-century realists, creates an entirely new type of fiction in his epic novel, whose first volume (Du cote de chez Swann) is published in 1913. The following year Gide publishes Les Caves du Vatican, which he refuses to call a novel yet which both uses and parodies the conventions of nineteenth-century realism. The unit will thus examine how the experimental novel in France, questioning its own procedures, is born.

Intended Learning Outcomes

Successful students will:

• be knowledgable about a significant cultural, historical or linguistic subject related to the language they are studying;
• will have advanced skills in the selection and synthesis of relevant material;
• be able to evaluate and analyse relevant material from a significant body of source materials, usually in a foreign language, at an advanced level;
• be able to respond to questions or problems by presenting their independent judgements in an appropriate style and at an advanced level of complexity;
• be able to transfer these skills to other working environments, including postgraduate study.

Teaching Information

One weekly lecture plus one weekly seminar

Assessment Information

3000 word essay (50%) and 2 hour exam (50%)

Reading and References

Reading and reference material will be provided on Blackboard.