Landscape in 19th and 20th Century French Literature / le paysage dans la literature des 19 et 20ième siècles

This course will explore in the poetry and the French novel aspects and the evolution of a major theme of the literary and artistic creation of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: the representation of landscape. We will look first at the romantic landscape, focusing on the contemplation of nature and the effects that this contemplation occurs on the spectator's soul: countryside (Lamartine), mountain (Senancour), sea (Hugo), exoticism (Chateaubriand ), etc.. Then we'll see how the interest of the observer moves from nature to the city, and how the birth of a city (Paris) supports the development of modernity (Balzac, Baudelaire, Zola, Apollinaris, etc..). This change is accompanied by the emergence of new landscapes: industrial landscape, landscape of ruins, war, etc.. We will study the links that the landscape has with psychological analysis (Proust), and we will show how the emergence of new forms of fiction (Céline, Giono, New Roman) causes a change in the representation of space. The thematic study of the landscape will be accompanied by the means of its literary representation in relation to painting: realism, impressionism, abstraction, etc. We will work on short extracts to be distributed to students in class.

Evaluation: each student will make a brief oral and written work of a dozen pages related to the topics covered during the course.