Reading the screen: French Cinema in Dialogue with Literature

3 credits

Conducted in French. Fulfills one of the 4000-level (advanced course) requirements for the French major or minor. This course explores the rich relationship between French literature and cinema through literary texts and their cinematic adaptations, as well as through films in which books, reading, and literary language play a central role. Short stories, a novel, and selected excerpts by authors including Flaubert, Maupassant, Balzac, Pascal, and Duras will be read alongside films by major French directors such as Renoir, Ophuls, Truffaut, Chabrol, Rohmer, and Resnais. Through close reading and comparison of texts and films, we will examine how literary and cinematic forms intersect, echo, and transform one another, and how the movement between page and screen opens new ways of reading and seeing.