The course aims to place early French literature in a broader social and cultural 
context.  By the end of the term, students will demonstrate understanding of the 
major socio-political structures of medieval and early modern France; they will be 
familiar with major literary genres of these periods; and they will improve their 
oral/aural, written, and interpretive skills by analyzing, in French, representative 
texts.  This will be accomplished through classroom discussions based, in part, on 
study questions that students will prepare before coming to class, and through the 
various written assignments, the midtern and final examinations.  Students will 
write four short essays, a term paper (seven to eight pages in length), and prepare 
one group presentation.  Like practically every course in our department, this 
course examines a Romance language, literature, and culture in an integrated manner, 
and does so in the target language (French).  Therefore, oral communication and 
writing skills are given the same importance as analytical skills.

Feudal France:  social organization; architecture; orality and literacy; Crusade
ethic; La Chanson de Roland; courtly texts and contexts:  rise of courtly culture;
lyric poetry; Arthurian romance and Celtic legend; Marie de France, Lais; romances of 
Chr‚tien de Troyes; Hundred Years War and the courtly ideal in crisis:  poetry of
Charles d'Orl‚ans, Christine de Pizan, Fran‡ois Villon
                         
Reniassance France:  emergence of a "print culture", consolidation of monarchy;
humanism; colonialism; prose works by Rabelais, Montaigne, Marguerite de Navarre;
Italy and France; sonnets of Lab‚ Ronsard, Du Bellay
                         
Seventeenth-century France:  the Baroque; pr‚ciosit‚; culture and litertature of
absolute monarchy; neo-classicism (Boileau, Racine, Corneille); comic theatre
(MoliŠre); emergence of the modern novel (La Princesse de ClŠves); moralists (La
Rochefoucauld, La Fontaine, Pascal); epistolary texts (Mme de S‚vign‚)