FRENCH 376 A: Culture, Politics, and Society in France from the Religious Wars to Revolutions

Autumn 2020
Meeting:
TTh 10:30am - 11:50am / * *
SLN:
15385
Section Type:
Lecture
Instructor:
TAUGHT IN ENGLISH. NO PREREQUISITES, OPEN TO ALL STUDENTS. OFFERED VIA REMOTE LEARNING
Syllabus Description (from Canvas):

Course flyer

 

Description. This course offers a historical exploration of France and the Francophone world from the Religious Wars in the 1500s up to the Revolution of 1789. This critical moment witnessed the emergence of France as a modern state and, ultimately, a nation, with a centralized administration, an official language, and the claim to a shared French culture and national identity. We will read a mixture of historical documents from the time -- literary texts, political and philosophical writings, and adminstrative documents – along with secondary works to study the following:

* new theories and practices of kingship and monarchical power (absolutism; divine right, Versailles, the court and the cult of royal grandeur; the importance of military campaigns) as well as efforts to limit the scope and power of the king (noble and Parlementary resistence and revolt during the Fronde; the rise of public opinion in the eighteenth century, emerging ideals of the "Nation" and theories of "citizenship")

* cultural, literary and linguistic politics; culture and literature in the service of royal propaganda and the court; writers as critics of the king in a period of control and censorship; efforts to elevate and regulate French as the language of the King and both the royal court and the judicial courts

* social upheavals; the traditional "orders" -- the nobility, the clergy, the "third estate" -- transformed by the expanding administrative state and by economic and cultural changes brought on by new realities: urbanization, mobility, new consumption patterns entailed by global trade and colonialism

* shifting attitudes towards marriage and gender; notions of private life and the domestic sphere

* religion and politics, after the Religious Wars of the 1560s-1590s, with the establishment of a large Protestant population in a commited but strategic Catholic monarchy; tensions with Rome and the development of an autonomous French Catholicism in Gallicanism

* the importance of new media and communications environments; the rise and impacts of printing and the expansion of books and literacy; royal propaganda, censorship, and the use of pamphlets to contest royal power; creating and shaping public opinion; the postal system and the establishment of new interpersonal networks and a sense of privacy

 

 

Catalog Description:
Studies the development of intellectual, literary, and artistic cultures in the context of the profound political and social evolutions of the Renaissance through the early nineteenth century in France. Taught in English.
GE Requirements Met:
Social Sciences (SSc)
Arts and Humanities (A&H)
Credits:
5.0
Status:
Active
Last updated:
March 29, 2024 - 4:12 am