Litterature francaise : les origines, le Moyen Age et la Renaissance

Paper Code: 
FRN-123
Credits: 
4
Contact Hours: 
60.00
Max. Marks: 
100.00
Objective: 

This paper will seek to focus on

  1. a very brief introduction to a few major Greek dramatists of the Antiquity having influence on later French classicists and neoclassicists
  2. Christianity and the Middle Ages
  3. the spirit of Renaissance in France
  4. and the study of  extracts or complete texts accepted as  representatives  of the major phases in/ movements of French literature, starting from the Middle Ages till and including the Renaissance

 

 

12.00
Unit I: 

Brief introduction to Greek tragedy, its themes, principles and the works of Sophocles, Aeschylus and Euripides,

Arrival of Christianity; the Crusades;

Socio-political & cultural  condition of  France in the Middle Ages; the major ‘cycles’  of poetic and prose works,

 

 

 

12.00
Unit II: 

the major ‘cycles’  of poetic and prose works (contn,)

  study of excerpts from “Chanson de Roland”

 

 

12.00
Unit III: 

Villon

Socio-political & cultural  condition prevailing in   France before and during the “Renaissance”; Ronsard and La Pleiade;

Study of complete text of the poem “La ballade des pendus”(Villon)

 Study of complete texts of the poems “France, mere des arts..” & “Heureux qui comme Ulysse..”(Du Bellay) and of  “A  Cassandre” and “Il faut laisser maisons..” (Ronsard)

 

 

 

12.00
Unit IV: 

Socio-political & cultural  condition prevailing in   France before and during the “Renaissance”

Excerpts from “Gargantua” (Rabelais)_

 

 

 

 

 

 

12.00
Unit V: 

Socio-political & cultural  condition prevailing in   France before and during the “Renaissance”

Study of two essays by Montaigne

 

 

 

 

 

References: 

(Apart from the literary texts mentioned in the programme) : 

  • Histoire de la litterature francaise, Lanson
  • Histoire de la litterature francaise, Castex et Surer                                                     
  • An anthology of French poetry, Oxford
  • History of French literature : Cazamian
  • Litterature francaise : Lagarde et Michel

 

Academic Year: