Pratique et plaisir du texte, sur les textes de l'Advanced Placement / Textual Analysis of Advanced Placement Texts

This course is designed to develop students' critical discourse on literature and to elaborate a method for dealing with the formals and historical questions posed by the works on the 2006 AP French Literature program. In doing so we will also establish a forum for discussion of students' experience with the program. The course will devote two weeks each to the three major genres represented, and will consider both text and context. Poetry: Du Bellay and Anne Hébert. Emphasis on the importance of titles and publication dates; composition, rhythm, rhyme, sound patterns; images, lexical networks, symbols. The novel: Maupassant's Pierre et Jean and L'Enfant noir by Camara Laye. The importanc eof story construction, narrative mode, technique and function of description, systems of characters, historical context. Theatre, with Giraudoux's La Guerre de Troi n'aura pas lieu. Speech and stage direction, dialogue and monologue, the role and function of characters, dramatic structure, dramatic time and space. We will finish with a review of several productions of l"Ecole des femmes.

Texts: Maupassant, Pierre et Jean ; Camara Laye L'Enfant noir ; Giraudoux La Guerre de Troie n'aura pas lieu Molière L'Ecole des femmes.