To familiarize upper-division undergraduate students with the 
major authors and literary movements in France and the 
French-speaking world since the early 20th century.  Students 
will learn to analyze individual styles, genre structures, and 
qualities that characterize particular periods in modern literature 
of French expression, with particular attention to the opposition 
between artistic traditions and the innovative and revolutionary 
qualities of modern artistic movements.  Coursework will encourage 
students to situate literary works in their cultural, historic 
and linguistic context.  In their readings, oral and written 
assignments and exams, students will be expected to develop the 
vocabulary, reading skills, literary terminology and analytical 
techniques necessary to understand and discuss comtemporary 
literary works effectively.

The turn-of-the century revolution in arts and literature; the 
great figures of the early 20th century (Proust, Gide, Claudel, 
Val‚ry); the modernist and cubist movements; the First World War;
Dada and Surrealism; poetic theatre and the traditional novel of 
the 30's; the Occupation in drama, fiction, poetry and cinema; 
Existentialism; Francophone cultures and literatures (Caribbean, 
Quebec, North and Sub-Saharan Afica); the Theater of the Absurd; 
the New Novel; theory and philosophy (structuralism, deconstruction);
contemporary poetry, theater, prose and cinema.