FREN 3531 - Les Monstres

(HB) (CA-AS) Satisfies Option 1.

Spring. 4 credits. Student option grading.

Prerequisite: FREN 2310, FREN 2180, or CASE Q++.

K. Long.

Monsters have preoccupied France for a long time. Their stories reveal a great deal about French notions of difference, expressed in the form of gender, race, species, social class, religion, and culture. Since the medieval period, monsters evoke the tension between normativity and the exceptional, the idealized body (generally masculine) and the abnormal one (according to Foucault). We will also consider questions of moral monstrosity, monstrosity as an evocation of the boundaries of life and of humanity, and how discourses of monstrosity call into question our concepts of knowledge. Is there such a thing as monstrous epistemology, a category to which we can exile all that which does not fit into our systems of thought ? Authors to be studied will include: Chrétien de Troyes, François Rabelais, Ambroise Paré, Victor Hugo, Gaston Leroux, and Michel Foucault.