French C202: Linguistic History of the Romance Language
Mairi-Louise McLaughlin
Dwinelle 4226 | Wednesday, 1-4pm
This course traces the development of the Romance language family from its origins in Latin through to contemporary varieties. This includes both major national standard languages but also less well studied and/or minoritized languages and varieties in the family. The course aims to provide a broad understanding of the major linguistic changes that affected the Romance languages at the levels of phonology, morphology, syntax, and lexis. Central questions include which factors lead to linguistic change, how we should model the relationships between the different languages in the family, and how well our theories account for the vast amount of variation that exists within each language in any given period.
The course also places considerable emphasis on the external history of the languages and varieties that make up the Romance family. This means that we will adopt a socio-historical approach to the study of the history of Romance. This is a relatively new and very fruitful approach in historical linguistics. It has broadened the task of language historians who now seek a better picture of the variation that existed in past states. Not only does this help paint a more realistic picture of the past, it also furthers our understanding of language variation and change.
The course is taught in English. You should have good proficiency of at least one Romance language. Reach out directly to the instructor if you have any questions!
Frenc C203: Authorship, Authority, and Critique: Sociological Approaches to Early Modern Romance Literatures (1500–1800)
Deborah A. Blocker
Dwinelle 4226 | Tuesday, 2-5pm
This seminar provides a broad introduction to sociological approaches to literature for students in French and in the Romance Languages and Literatures (RLL) Doctoral Program. Because it focuses on early modern Romance literatures (in France, Italy, and Spain), from 1500 to 1800, the seminar is also suitable for students of the Designated Emphasis in Renaissance and Early Modern Studies (REMS), and, more generally, for students in early modern history and art history, who focus on social and cultural issues. The seminar will foster both a genealogical inquiry into the birth of historicized understandings of literary practices and a methodological investigation of the various kinds of socio-political readings of literature currently practiced in early modern French and Romance Studies. The seminar will also investigate social history, manuscript studies, the history of the book, and cultural approaches to literary production. We will ask questions such as: What is an author in the early modern period? When do authors begin to acquire a defined social status in early modern societies? Why and how was printing policed in early modern France, Italy, and Spain? What do we mean when we claim that early modern literature “reflects” the society of its time — and does it? What forms does social and political critique take in early modern Romance literatures — and why? Do literary practices have the same status and social functions in early modern France, Italy and Spain? Or do literary practices differ in how they are mobilized across Romance societies during the early modern period? How do literary practices, works, registers and genres circulate between France, Italy and Spain between 1500 and 1800? Is the social status of authors in early modern Romance societies somehow tied to their capacity to describe and/or critique the societies in which they live — and, if so, what are the literary devices and genres which allowed for the expression of their points of view? What tools and methods are at our disposal when we want to understand the status of early modern authors in social and political terms? How can we discern, describe, and analyze social and political viewpoints in early modern texts?
The seminar starts by investigating early philological approaches to the question of style and auctorial voice (Leo Spitzer on Diderot, in association with Rameau’s Nephew) and of the “representation of reality” in literary works (Eric Auberbach on Montaigne, The Essays, II, 2, “On Repentance”). We will subsequently work through a series of case studies in which the close examination of a literary work (or set of works) will be associated with secondary readings exemplifying a variety of social and political approaches to these texts. The tools and methods mobilized in these studies will be carefully examined in class. The case studies will include: Joachim Du Bellay, The Regrets (excerpts); Torquato Tasso, Aminta; Lope de Vega’s, La Noche di San Juan (The Night of Saint John’s); Cervantes, Don Quixote (excerpts), Scarron, excerpts of Le Roman comique (The City Romance); Molière, Les Fourberies de Scapin (Scapin the Schemer) and Le Misanthrope (The Misanthrope); Jean Racine, Alexandre Le Grand (Alexander the Great) and Esther; Carlo Goldoni, La Donna di garbo (The Fashionable Woman); Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions (Book 1); Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, Le Mariage de Figaro (The Mariage of Figaro); Lorenzo Da Ponte, Le Nozze di Figaro (opera libretto); Louis Sébastien Mercier, Astræa’s Return; or, the Halcyon Days of France in the Year 2440: A Dream (excerpts).
Some sessions of the seminar will also include the following guest speakers: Dinah Ribard (GRIHL, EHESS) and Nicolas Schapira (GRIHL, University of Nanterre), David Do Paço (academic attaché, French Consulate in San Francisco), Carlotta Moro (Italian Studies, UCB), Ignacio Navarette (Spanish and Portuguese, UCB), Paulina Leon (Spanish and Portuguese, UCB), Michael Iarocci (Spanish and Portuguese, UCB), Jeremy Foa (History, University of Aix-Marseille). These guests will present a recent book or article, often in conjunction with a primary source, in the first hour of the seminar, and answer any methodological questions students might have. The purpose of these interventions is to introduce students to current work in the field, both at UC Berkeley and beyond.
All class discussions will take place in English. RLL students are required to read all primary sources in their original language (French, Italian, or Spanish). As often as possible, these primary texts will also be discussed in class in their original wording. But to accommodate students from French, REMS, History and History of Art, many primary readings in French, Italian, and Spanish will also be available in English on bCourses. Most secondary readings (but not all of them) will be in English. Students from French taking this class as an FR 245 may turn in their final papers in French or in English. RLL and REMS students must turn in their final paper in English.
Main primary texts: Joachim Du Bellay, Poemata (excerpts) and excerpts of Les Regrets (The Regrets); Torquato Tasso, Aminta; Montaigne, The Essays, book III, ch. 2: “Du Repentir” (“On Repentance”); Scarron, excerpts of Le Roman comique (The City Romance); Lope de Vega, La Noche di San Juan (The Night of Saint John’s) and l’Arte nuevo de hacer comedias en este tiempo (The New Art of Writing Plays); Cervantes, Don Quixote (excerpts); Molière, Les Fourberies de Scapin (Scapin the Schemer) and Le Misanthrope (The Misanthrope); Racine, Alexandre Le Grand (Alexander the Great) and Esther; Carlo Goldoni, La Donna di garbo (The Fashionable Woman); Diderot, Rameau’s Nephew; Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions (Book 1), Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, Le Mariage de Figaro (The Mariage of Figaro); Lorenzo Da Ponte, Le Nozze di Figaro (opera libretto); Louis Sébastien Mercier, L’An 2440, rêve s'il en fut jamais or Astræa's Return; or, the Halcyon Days of France in the Year 2440: A Dream (excerpts).
Principal secondary readings: Erich Auerbach, Mimesis (the essay on “L’Humaine condition”), Leo Spitzer, Linguistics and Literary History (the essay on “The Style of Diderot”); Anita Stoll, “Politics, patronage, and Lope’s La Noche de San Juan”; Florence d’Artois, “Lope de Vega at the Limits of Poetics”; Caroline Egan, “From Lazarillo to ‘otro Lazarillo’: the Picaresque Novel in Golden Age Spain”; Robert A. Folger, “Don Quixote and its World: the Politics of Parody”, James Iffland, “On the Social Destiny of Don Quixote: Literature and Ideological Interpellation” (I and II); Jack Hayes, “Joachim Du Bellay, the Murder of Livia Colonna (1522–1554), and Lyric Communities Between Rome and France”; Jean-Charles Monferran, “Pierre, barbier de Rome ? Ou comment lire les papiers-journaux des Regrets de Du Bellay?”; Peter V. Conroy, “The Narrative Stance in Scarron’s Roman Comique” ; Roland Racevskis, “Abundance and Waste in Scarron’s Le Roman Comique”; Groupe de Recherches Interdisciplinaires sur l’Histoire du Littéraire (or GRIHL), History and the Literary: a Method of Interdisciplinary Enquiry into 17th to 20th France (excerpts); Alain Viala, Naissance de l’écrivain (excerpts), Racine ou la stratégie du caméléon (excerpts) and “Des stratégies dans les lettres”; Christian Jouhaud, Les Pouvoirs de la littérature: histoire d’un paradoxe (excepts); Christian Jouhaud, Dinah Ribard and Nicolas Schapira, Histoire, littérature, témoignage: écrire les malheurs du temps (excerpts); Philippe Lejeune, The Autobiographical Pact (excerpts) ; David Do Paço, “Mobilités et précarités : Lorenzo Da Ponte dans le monde de l’opéra (1779-1830)”; Philippe Lejeune, excerpts of Le Pacte Autobiographique (The Autobiographical Pact) ; Robert Darnton, The Forbidden Best-sellers of Pre-revolutionary France (“Utopian fantasies”) and La Condition d’écrivain: culture et Révolution dans la France du XVIIIe siècle (excerpts); Gregory S. Brown, A Field of Honor: Writers, Court Culture and Public Theater in French Literary Life from Racine to the Revolution (excerpts); Diane B. Brown, “The Pedagogical City of Louis-Sébastien Mercier’s ‘L’An 2440’”.
History of Art 290: Graduate Seminar: Objects in the (Early Modern) Archive: Theory and Historical Practice
Todd P. Olson
Doe Library 308B | Thursday, 9am-12pm
Archival research is a foundational practice in art history that is shared with other historical disciplines. The study of provenance indexes, ledgers, inventories, and other written documents tracing artistic production, reception, and commerce has been driven, in part, by the auction houses and the art market. Other sources, such as inquisition testimonies, testaments, ecclesiastical visitations, and trial transcripts, are shared with micro-historians in the pursuit of both biographical and epistemic social analysis. This seminar will examine the theory and methodology of archival production and research practices with the aim of addressing latent inquiries, the silences in the written record, and an expanding notion of the archive that includes material practices and objects. Emphasis will be placed on the early modern period in diverse geographies, but seminar participants are welcome to pursue and share other historical research projects.
2 or 4 units