Credit 3 units. WS Focusing on topics of cultural and social importance, this course will offer students the opportunity to learn about defining moments in the French tradition. The specific topic of the course will vary from semester to semester, and may include works from different disciplines, such as art, film, gender studies, history, literature, music, philosophy, politics, science. Whether a pretext for art or seduction, the stage enables us to admit what we are or to be what we are not. Society's constraints are discarded in the theater, where performers give free rein to their actions and the audience gives free rein to its imagination.
Emotion is conveyed, desire projected, and identities are mistaken.
French literature often features moments in which men impersonate women, women men, and castrati both. The distinction between gender and sexuality becomes the wild card in the theatrical space, one that thwarts expectations, reroutes desire, and falsifies emotion. We will read scenes from authors such as Cazotte, Beaumarchais, Stakl, Sand, Balzac, Flaubert, Huysmans, Zola, and Leiris. We will also view excerpts from opera and film to analyze how they play upon the sensibilities of their readers, imperceptibly involving us in the game of deception. 307D. Replaces Fr 319.