Course teached as: B004674 - LETTERATURA FRANCESE 1 (12 CFU) 3-years First Cycle Degree (DM 270/04) in LANGUAGES, LITERATURES AND INTERCULTURAL STUDIES Curriculum STUDI LINGUISTICI, LETTERARI E INTERCULTURALI
Teaching Language
Italian (optional French)
Course Content
The course, whose title is: "Crisis of Enlightenment" aims to explore the "dark side" of Enlightenment itself, which is represented by two philosophes, once friends, then enemies, and whose thinking announces Romanticism: Diderot and Rousseau.
Main texts (edition available at Librairie Française in Florence):
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, "La Nouvelle Héloise"
Denis Diderot, "Le Neveu de Rameau"
Other texts (editions Garnier-Flammarion or Gallimard):
Rousseau, "Confessions"
Rousseau, "Discours sur les sciences et les arts"
Rousseau, "Le Contrat social"
Rousseau, "Lettre à d'Alembert sur les spectacles"
Rousseau, "Discours sur l'origine des langues"
Diderot, "Lettre sur les sourds et muets"
Diderot, articles de l'Encyclopédie de Diderot et d'Alembert
Diderot, "Le paradoxe sur le comédien"
Paul Valéry ("Oeuvres complètes", I, Paris, Gallimard, 1954)
-préface aux "Lettres persanes"
-Ecrits divers sur l'Europe
Basic bibliography:
1. On Diderot and Rousseau: critical essays available at our Biblioteca Umanistica (to be complied with Prof. Landi)
2. On the crisis of Enlightenment:
- Jean Starobinski, "La Transparence et l'obstacle", Paris, Gallimard, 1974.
- Jean Starobinski, "Le remède dans le mal", Paris, Gallimard, 1989.
- Paul Hazard, "La crise de la conscience européenne", Paris, Livre de Poche, 1994.
- Th. Adorno, M. Horkheimer, "La dialectique des la raison" Paris, Gallimard, "Tel", 1983.
- F. Orlando, "Illuminismo, Barocco e retorica freudiana", Torino, Einaudi, 1974.
-G. Debord, "La société du spectacle", Paris Gallimard, 1992.
Learning Objectives
Reconsider, by questioning its edge, the Enlightenment orthodoxy, cradle of modern european thinking, with special references to our cultural modernity.
- Education to citizenship
- Development of critical sense through the analysis of dialectical instruments.
Prerequisites
French Language level consequent to the exam of French Language 1, allowing proper comprehension of original texts (literature, critics).
Teaching Methods
Frontal lessons with text analysis (hhermeneutic approach) with no media supports. Discussion on the different course subjects.
Further information
The two course texts will be available at the Librairie Française, Piazza Ognissanti, Florence.
As of Administrative instructions, a course will be valid following the student presence at at least 2/3 of the global lessons number.
Type of Assessment
Oral exam in Italian or French, with evaluation of the following items:
- cultural knowledge (40/100)
-argumentation ability (40/100)
- original approach to the subject (20/100)
The exam, divided into three parts, aims to verify the following learning abilities:
- knowledge of French literature relating to the century involved in the course subject.
- Argumentative elaboration level of the two critical essays at students choice
- knowledge of the general subject of the course and personal elaboration of the subjects themselves.
Course program
The course will be divided into two parts. The first part will be introduced by general references to the Enlightenment thinking and narrative proceeding, with focus on the epistolary novel in Eighteenth century. Then, we will be analyzing "La Nouvelle Héloise" by Rousseau, in order to appreciate the narrative structure as well as the philosophical assumptions at the basis of the novel. In such context, the confrontation with Rousseau's contemporary literature ( Laclos "Les Liaisons dangereuses"; Montesquieu's "Lettres persanes") and with Rousseau's intertext ("Discours sur les sciences et les arts"; "Contrat social"; "Confessions"; Essai sur l'origine des langues"; "Lettre à d'Alembert sur les spectacles"; "Pygmalion") will be essential to appreciate the complexity of the philosophe's thinking.
In the second part of the course we will be working on Diderot's ideas through the lens of a posthumous work, "Le Neveu de Rameau", which has represented for Goethe and Hegel one of the reference texts, so announcing Romantic and modern thinking. As well, we will be considering for Diderot the intertext (articles for "Encyclopédie", the "Lettre sur les sourds et les muets"; "Le paradoxe sur le comédien"), in order to appreciate the complexity of Diderot's perspective. For both authors we will be proposing a confrontation with the forms and ideas of our modernity and contemporary age.