It emphasizes the works of one or several of the major artists of the period or of one school of art. This course examines the place of France in the European Union. An introduction to the spirit of the French Enlightenment through some of the major literary and philosophical works of Montesquieu, Marivaux, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Diderot. The course involves a historical presentation of the 18th century as well as a study of the main genres of the time, and of the great individual works to which we still refer today in our thinking about art, science, politics, and love. Women and Society in the Novel A study of the 19th-century novel from the point of view of woman and her status in society.
Students attend theatrical performances.
This course first concentrates on French society before 1789 and on the historiography of the French Revolution. It examines the part played by different segments of the population, and various channels of revolutionary and counterrevolutionary propaganda. It shows how the Terreur gave way to military dictatorship, and concludes with an evaluation of the revolution in French and world history. Starting from the distribution of social classes and the dominant political groups, the course studies contemporary French socio-political dialectics. It examines the cleavages in French society and the solution proposed to reduce them.