* This course is located in Paris, France. *
Paris, through the Mirror of Literature

Paris is where the concept of a city achieves consciousness and where the conscience of a city was first able to express itself. The course analyzes texts that support German essayist Karleinz Stiergle’s assertion. It includes an overview of modern Paris by studying how Paris was constructed as a literary space, a landscape, and a character. We will examine how each writer shaped his own image of Paris and – conversely – how Paris served as an extraordinary source of inspiration and a place of self-invention for these authors. Each class meeting will be devoted to the analysis of one or more texts, which will be supplemented by literary walks and documentary viewings. The course objective are:

Finding societal details and comparing them with historical, sociological, and cultural documents as well as personal surveys.
Highlighting each text’s originality, the literary movement to which it relates, opening it – if possible – to “world literature.”

We will focus on certain concepts: Spleen, Flâneur, Bohême, Aura, Allegory, Alienation, Passages, Phantasmagoria, etc.

The course has three parts. The first studies and analyzes the works of French writers (Baudelaire, Balzac, Zola, Hugo, Apollinaire, Breton, Modiano); the second explores the other Paris: that of European and American writers (Benjamin, Hemingway, Cortázar); and the third focuses on Black Paris: Paris seen, read, experienced, described by African-American, Caribbean and African writers (Baldwin, Glissant, Senghor, Césaire, Mabanckou, etc).

Required texts :

BENJAMIN, Walter, Paris, capitale du XIXe siècle, Paris, Allia, 2015. ISBN-13: ‎ 978-2844859952
HEMINGWAY, Ernest, Paris est une fête, Paris, Folio Gallimard, 2012. ISBN-13 : ‎ 978-2070437443
HARRIS, Eddy, Paris en Noir et black, Paris, Levi, 2009. ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-2867465109