French 4311 - Voices of Dissent: Enlightenment Principle and Social Protest

Institution:

Washington University in St Louis

Subject:

Description:

The 18th century saw a rise in overtly moralizing texts, on the one hand, and unapologetically immoralist philosophies on the other. We focus on texts that avoid these extremes, allowing multiple voices to be heard. With the aid of excerpts from Genette, Bakhtine, Todorov, and Barthes, we identify the voices of dissent in several 18th-century genres, including satire, the tale, the novella, the philosophical dialogue, theater, autobiography, and the epistolary novel. By reading authors such as Voltaire, Montesquieu, Prévost, Diderot, Cazotte, Rousseau, Beaumarchais, and Charrière, students come to appreciate a third tendency in 18th-century texts that is crucial to our understanding of the Enlightenment: the tendency to validate conflicting perspectives. We consider whether a moral can be derived from a text that consistently questions the voice of authority. We analyze the implications of such questioning in the years before the Revolution. Finally, we consider the extent to which the overzealous censorship laws of the period may have obliged authors to couch socially controversial ideas in narrative forms that seem to deny their own assertions. Prerequisites: French 325 and French 326 or one of these courses and the equivalent Washington University transfer literature course from Toulouse or Paris. One hour preceptorial required for undergraduates.

Credits:

3.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.wustl.edu

Phone Number:

(314) 935-5000

Regional Accreditation:

North Central Association of Colleges and Schools

Calendar System:

Semester

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