French 340 - TOPICS IN 17TH/18TH CENT LIT

Topics course. Naive pawn in European geopolitics or political intriguer? Fashion leader or obsessive consumer? Scandalous pleasure seeker or devoted mother? French Queen or Austrian spy? Instigator of the French Revolution or innocent victim? More than two hundred years after her execution, Marie Antoinette continues to fascinate, caught between history and myth and open to conflicting interpretations. How can we understand the persona behind or in the body that proliferated so many meanings? How can we trace the origins and the impacts of those meanings? Does Marie-Antoinette?s semiotic body continue to signify for us? We'll examine Marie Antoinette from a variety of perspectives: archival sources, documents and letters, biographies, portraits, both official and unofficial, caricatures, pornographic pamphlets, and fictional works such as plays, novels and films in which she figures. The course will incorporate a role-playing unit reenacting her trial, during which every member of the class will play the role of one of the important participants. Some film screenings.

Topic: Marie Antoinette's Semiotic Body.