FREN 10.10 Du mal/On Evil

This course proposes a look at “evil” in French literature, art, and film (1665-1966). What does “evil” designate? A concept, or an ethical category?  A limit of the thinkable and sayable? The proof of human freedom? Is there a semiotics of evil? Can it be represented, or does its excess necessarily elude our attempts to pin it down (as when something “hurts,” or “fait mal”)? What is its relationship to the violence of history (from the death of God to the ravages of time passing by)? How does literature challenge us to think about what it means to be a witness to evil?
Plays by Molière; novels, short-stories or essays by Voltaire, Balzac, Maupassant, Sartre; poems by Baudelaire, Musset, Verlaine, Hugo, Louise Michel; paintings and caricature by Daumier, Caillebotte, Manet, Meissonnier. Film by Gillo Pontecorvo (La Bataille d’Alger). Excerpts of readings from Hannah Arendt, Terry Eagleton, Georges Bataille, Raymond Williams, Sigmund Freud, Cathy Caruth.

Instructor

St. Clair

Prerequisite

French 8 or permission of the individual instructor

Degree Requirement Attributes

Dist:LIT; WCult:W

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