French Studies 597LM - ST-Late Medieval/Renn Storytel

The purpose of this seminar is to acquaint the participants with some works of late-mediaval and Renaissance storytellers (French "conteurs"). We will read a variety of texts in the storytelling tradition, from Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles to Beroalde de Verville's Le Moyen de parvenir. We will place emphasis on genre definition, narratology, aesthetics and cultural history. Among the problems we will discuss together are the following: the relationship between ideology (courtly love, feudalism, humanism, evangelism, etc.) and literature; rhetoric and truth; historicity and exemplarity; imitation, intertextuality and "vraisemblance"; authority, authorship and gendered discourse, self-referentiality and identity.