French Literature and/of the Body (16th-21st c.)

Undergraduate / Graduate

This transhistorical course surveys nine approaches to writing the body in French and Francophone literature. It starts with the 16th-century poetic form of the "blason," which turns the description of a woman's body into an anatomic and erotic experiment. Studying various forms of writing-novels, essays, poetry, and theater-this course introduces students to references such as Molière, Sade, Charles Baudelaire, Aimé Césaire, Antonin Artaud, and Monique Wittig. Each of these authors will guide the class to different literary perspectives on the body, from questions of aesthetics, race, and politics, to radical sexualities and body horror.