Taught by Instructor Associate Professor Masano Yamashita
FREN 5120. Fault lines: Accidents and Chance in eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century French literature
Thursdays 2:00-4:30pm
Shipwrecks, carriage accidents, contagious maladies, lotteries, financial bubbles, accidental pregnancies and sudden death – such were some of the peripeteia of eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century French fiction. The French reading public was fascinated with unexpected events that punctured everyday life. Although celebrated as the Age of Reason, the century of Enlightenment was keenly drawn to stories of non-choosing (involuntariness), catastrophes and fate. These stories encapsulated key moments where chance and tragedy threatened to frustrate and overwhelm human agency and the human capacity to make sense of life.
Underlying the interest in accidents and disasters is the social preoccupation with the meting of equality (and therefore also, inequality), and the growing consciousness of a risk-society.
This course will explore involuntary exile and constraint in émigré fiction; the dynamics of chance, desire and control in libertine fiction; and representations of personal and collective disasters in the sentimental novel.