Le Roman français aux XIXe et XXe siècles / The Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century Novel

The novels in the first part of the course (J. Moiray) will be studied from several points of view: socio-historical (their relation to the political and social history of France in the nineteenth century, and the image of French society they convey), ideological (how they interpret historical and social material, their conception of society), and aesthetic (the development and limits of literary realism). In the second part of the course, (R. Lauverjat), we will look at the evolution of narrative from the 1920's to the end of the century. We will identify the main trends within the rich and diverse production in the twentieth century, and place them in political intellectual and aesthetic context. Other major texts and theoretical works will also be invoked in addition to the texts listed below:

Texts Balzac, Le Père Goriot ; Flaubert Un Coeur simple in Trois Contes ; Proust Combray in Du côté de chez Swann ; Sartre, La Nausée ; Yourcenar, Mémoires d'Hadrien ; Claude Simon, Le Tramway.