French 345 - Modern French Poetry

This class will introduce students to essential voices in French and Francophone poetry, from the mid-nineteenth century to the contemporary era. It will focus on the emergence of poetic modernity, through some key themes such as the representation of identity and the self; the idea of dissonance; the conflict between realism and the fantastic; and the complex relation with the French language and French literary tradition.

We will read poetry by Charles Baudelaire; Arthur Rimbaud; Jules Laforgue; Guillaume Apollinaire; and the Surrealists Robert Desnos, René Char, and Gisèle Prassinos. Selections from Francophone literature will introduce poetry from a broad array of geographical areas and cultures, including French Guyana (Léon-Gontran Damas); Senegal (Léopold Sedar Senghor); Lebanon (Vénus Khoury-Ghata, Salah Stétié); Algeria (Kateb Yacine, Assia Djebar); and Martinique (Edouard Glissant). Conducted in French.

Requisite: One of the following--French 207, 208 or the equivalent. Fall semester: Professor Katsaros.