FREN 3600 - Introduction to French Literary Analysis

Goals: The course focuses on literary interpretation and analysis as a means to empower students with the requisite tools to understand the basics of criticism, poetics and what is meant by mimesis and semiosis. It further aims at presenting students with different methodological approaches to answer the pervasive questions of: 1) What is a text? What is meaning? Is there a sui generis approach to reading a literary text?

Content: Designed to instill in students critical thinking skills and the appreciative art of savoir-faire rhetoric that brings about textual representations. Various methodological approaches to literary criticism and textual analysis will be introduced, viz. structuralism, post-structuralism, Freudian criticism, sociopoetics, etc.

Taught: Periodically

Recommended prerequisites: FREN 3440, taken at Hamline.

Credits: 4 credits