(Non)Conforming in 17-c France

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

This course reflects the trend in historical research to revise the standard narrative that monarchic absolutism “triumphed” unequivocally and culminated in France’s Golden Age, the “Great Century” (Le Grand Siècle). Such revision rests not on some radical theoretical or ideological platform, but rather on a more complete and impartial examination of the evidence at our disposal. While it remains undeniable that creative works from the Early-Modern period were produced by an extremely narrow social elite, they frequently expressed non-conformist views, usually in a subtle enough manner to avoid serious trouble for the author: dissenters, malcontents and transgressors of all kinds risked not only the suppression of their activities, but exile, jail or worse. While giving students a solid grounding on what French culture has enshrined as its works of reference (“les classiques”), this course also provides them with an intellectual toolkit for a critical (re)examination: how to look beyond established categories of “high” and “low,” how to evaluate the cultural impact of social groups who did not enjoy a prominent status—notably women, and how to detect non-conformist views in works that may not appear particularly militant at first glance, such as fairy tales, fables, farcical comedies, “genre” paintings or fanciful travel narratives. Even in some of the “classics” that appear to fully support the reigning social order, such as tragedies, they will learn how to look for evidence of underlying tensions between patriarchal authority and yearnings for emancipation or simply a more equitable distribution of agency.