French 450
Fall 2001
James Reid
Office Hours: W 10-12 or by apt.
438-7894
http://lilt.ilstu.edu/jhreid/
jhreid@ilstu.edu
Autobiography and the first-person novel began to take on importance only in the French eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as did the notion of the individual. Before Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions, in the middle of the eighteenth century, there were only two major autobiographies: Augustine's Confessions in the fifth century and Benvenuto Cellini's autobiography in the sixteenth century. Otherwise, first-person narration was almost non-existent. For millenia, people did not feel that they were defined by an individual, inner self that they would express by saying "I." Rather, they saw themselves as being defined by the role they played within their family, guild, village, or city, a role that others have played before them. They tended to see overuse of the pronoun "I" to express one's own feelings as a socially unacceptable refusal of one's role within the group. Only in poetry, was the extensive use of the pronoun "I" deemed acceptable.
However, in the 1700s, Rousseau began his Confessions by saying, "Je veux montrer à mes semblables un homme dans toute la vérité de la nature; et cet homme ce sera moi. Moi seul. Je sens mon coeur et je connais les hommes. Je ne suis fait comme aucun de ceux qui existent. Si je ne vaux pas mieux, au moins je suis autre." Rousseau became the first prominent spokesperson for a gradual change that taking place in European thinking. Perhaps there is something unique and positive about each of us and perhaps people should talk and write about their individuality. With early nineteenth-century romanticism, saying "I" became the sign of unique romantic poets, autobiographers, and painters.
Autobiography and the autobiographical novel became more and more prevalent during the explosion of the industrial revolution and commerce in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. French realist novelists wrote in the third-person about the extraordinary power of a few brilliant or privileged individuals in business and industry. In the early twentieth century, writers began to affirm their uniqueness in reaction to the ways in which industry reduced workers to mere cogs in an industrial wheel. More and more novelists wrote fictional autobiographies in the first person, such as André Gide's L'Immoraliste and Marcel Proust's great A la recherche du temps perdu. The first-person novel became and continues to be a means of exploring the interface between the inner world of an individual and the outer social world in which she lives. We will explore this idea in reading four French, first-person novels written over the last twenty years.
Reading a first-person novel has its challenges. When I say "As a child, I was happy," the pronoun "I" refers to three people and three times, not one: the child in the past who was happy; the narrator in the present who remembers his past happiness, but who is not necessarily lonely; and the author who invents a narrator who remembers his past. Since I, your professor, wrote the sentence, "As a child, I was happy, and I was not happy as a child, I am clearly not the narrator who remembers being happy: I have invented her, as well as her past.
Literary theory has developed ways of talking about the relationship between protagonist (the happy child), the narrator (who remembers being happy), and the narrator (who invents a narrator who remembers being happy). Critical thinking has developed ways of interpreting this relationship.
Before beginning to read, here are some basic terms from critical theory that you will need to learn, as well as some important critical concepts.
What is the genre of fictionalized
autobiography? A fictional autobiography is a prose text in which
the author creates a narrator who is partly himself
and partly a person he imagines.
1. This partially fictional narrator may be speaking about a past self, the protagonist, who is
younger and less experienced than he, but is becoming him. Theoretically:
Author @
I/Narrator <=
Protagonist, where @
"partially resembles."
If an author writes, "When I was a teenager, I loved to take risks with
cars," and if the author did love to take risks, but not with cars,
then the past protagonist, as well as the narrator who remembers and speaks
about his past, only partially resemble the real author and his remembered
past.
2. This partially fictional narrator may be speaking about a past
self, the protagonist, who he has partially imagined, because he has
forgotten some of his past or he is lying about it. Theoretically:
Author @
I/Narrator @
Protagonist, where the partially
imaginary protagonist is not the one who became the narrator.
If a narrator says, "When we first got married, my wife and I never
argued" and if
they really did
argue, but she has repressed this knowledge, then she has invented a past
self that is not
the one that became the person she is now.
What is the genre of
the roman
personnel. A roman personnel is a completely fictional novel written in the
first person. Theoretically:
Author ¹
I/Narrator @
or <= Protagonist
If an author says "I was born in China to a traditional family"
and if none of this is true about his real life, then he has invented a
totally fictional narrator who remembers being born in China to a
traditional family. If the narrator is remembering his past
accurately, then the protagonist is becoming the narrator. If he has
partially invented a fictional past through forgetting or deceit, then the
protagonist only resembles the narrator.
Critical Thinking raises questions about the relationships between author, narrator, and protagonist established by first-person genres.
Definitions of genres always simplify what is going on in the text.
Authors of autobiographies never remember their past totally accurately. They also invent narrators who are much more knowledgeable than the authors are in reality. Autobiographies resemble fictionalized autobiographies.
Authors of "romans personnels" can never entirely eliminate their own experience from the fictions they create. They too resemble fictionalized autobiography.
As a result, our primary model for reading first-person narration will be the fictionalized autobiography where:
Author @ I/Narrator @ Protagonist
But the author creates the illusion that Author = I/Narrator <= Protagonist.
It is not necessary that the narrator, in the past that he recounts, be the protagonist or central character. Sometimes the narrator recounts a past in which he was only an observe, or only played a secondary role within the story he/she recounts.
A critical reading of first-person narration studies
how the narrator puts into question the illusions that the narrator is identical to the author and that the protagonist is the real past self of the narrator.
In other words, critical reading puts into question the notion that the pronoun "I," refers to a real author, narrator, or protagonist and replaces it with an awareness of how the author uses words to construct the illusion that the "I" refers to a real author, narrator, or protagonist.
First-person narration teaches us to become aware of how
we construct the person we are, rather than represent ourselves
accurately. It teaches us to translate the sentences, "I am
beautiful" or "I am homely," into the sentences
"I see myself as ugly" or "I see myself as beautiful."
The
following schedule is tentative. We may decide to spend an extra class day on
any scheduled work.
August 20 Introduction to first-person narration.
August 27 L'Amant I 9-42, Propose a class presentation.
Sepember 3 Labor Day
September 10 L'Amant II 42-78
September 17 L'Amant III 78-111
September 24 L'Amant IV 111-42
October 1 La Nuit sacrée I 9-65; Selected verses on Women, Introduction to Islam (copiez et lisez pour la premère classe) Map Morocco
October 8 La Nuit sacrée II 65-129, Propose a subject for your first essay before or after class.
October 15 La Nuit sacrée III 130-89
October 22 Poisson d'or I 11-73 Map Morocco
October 26, Friday, First Paper Due on L'Amant or La Nuit sacrée
October 29 Poisson d'or II 74-144
November 5 Poisson d'or III 145-218
November 12 Poisson d'or IV 219-98
November 19 Extension du domaine de la lutte I 5-49
November 26 Extension du domaine de la lutte II 51-105, Propose a subject for your first essay before or after class.
December 3 Extension du domaine de la lutte III 106-56
December 7, Friday, Second Paper due on Posson d'or or Extension du domaine de la lutte.
December 14, Final Exam 5:30
Required
Texts:
Duras,
Marguerite. L'Amant.
Paris: Minuit, 1984
Ben
Jelloun, Tahar. La Nuit sacrée. Paris: Seuil, 1987
Houellebecq, Michel. Extension du domaine de la lutte. Paris:
J'ai lu, 1994
Le Clézio, J. M. G. Poisson d'or. Paris: Gallimard, 1997.
Recommended
Reading:
Benveniste,
Emile. “La Nature des pronoms.”
Problèmes de linguistique générale.
Paris:
Gallimard, 1966. 253-57.
Lejeune,
Philippe. Le Pacte
autobiographique. Paris:
Seuil, 1975. 13-35.
History
of First-Person Discourse:
Augustine.
Confessions.
Rousseau,
Jean-Jacques. Confessions.
Theory
of Autobiography:
De
Man, Paul. “Autobiography as De-Facement.”
The Rhetoric of Romanticism. New York:
Columbia
UP, 1984.
Ellison,
David. “The Self In/As
Writing.” The
Reading of Proust. Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins,
1984.
Lejeune,
Philippe. Le Pacte
Autobiographique. Paris:
Seuil, 1975.
1993.
Marguerite
Duras:
Capitano,
Sarah J. "Perspectives sur l'écriture
durassienne: L'Amant.”
Symposium 41.1
(1987):
15-27.
Chirol,
Marie-Magdeleine. "Ruine, dégradation
et effacement dans L'Amant de
Marguerite Duras." The French Review
68.2 (1994): 261-73.
---.
Agatha
French
Literature Series
Ramsay, Raylene. "Through a Textual
Glass, Darkly: The Masochistic in
the Feminine
Self
and Marguerite Duras' Emily L.” Atlantis
17 (1991): 91-104.
Selous,
Trista. The Other Woman: Feminism and Feminity in the Work of Marguerite
Willis,
Sharon. Marguerite Duras:
Writing on the Body. Urbana:
U. of Illinois P. 1987.
Critical Reading Guides
Before coming to class, each student should complete all assigned readings and question sheets. Only questions with an asterisk must be answered in writing, but you should think out answers to all of the questions. Designated passages upon which a question is posed should be reread and interpreted both in terms of the passage itself and the text as a whole Question sheets must be copied from the web. See the class web page linked to my home page (see address above).
Class Presentation
As
a class presentation, each student will do a close reading of a structurally
significant passage chosen from one of the assigned primary texts.
In place of a close reading, a student may, with permission, present and
critique the argument in a critical article or chapter. The presenter will be
required to turn in and discuss with me an outline of the presentation at least one week before the
scheduled presentation.
Two Essays
You will write two 6-8 page essays. Each essay should contain a coherent argument, with introductory and concluding paragraphs, topic sentences, and logical transitions between paragraphs. Analysis of the text should be supported by evidence from the text, such as quotations and summary. You will propose a topic to me about two weeks before the essay is due.
Final Exam
There will be a final exam on all works discussed, all class discussion, and all critical reading guides.
Grade: Class Participation 10%
Question sheets 15%
Class Presentation 15%
Two Essays 40%
Final exam 20%