| Unit name | Realism and Experiment |
|---|---|
| Unit code | FREN30092 |
| Credit points | 20 |
| Level of study | H/6 |
| Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24) |
| Unit director | Dr. Bolster |
| Open unit status | Not open |
| Pre-requisites |
None |
| Co-requisites |
None |
| School/department | Department of French |
| Faculty | Faculty of Arts |
Five fictional texts will be studied, with the aim of showing how authors of the period progressively challenged the norms and conventions of what had become known as realism. Verne, Flaubert and Maupassant are commonly considered to be classic exponents of the realist novel, yet each of the chosen texts subverts and questions the genre, either by covert manipulation of the conventions, or by overt reference to the notion of realist fiction within the narrative itself. Proust, an admirer and a critic of the nineteenth-century realists, creates an entirely new type of fiction in his epic novel, whose first volume (Du cote de chez Swann) is published in 1913. The following year Gide publishes Les Caves du Vatican, which he refuses to call a novel yet which both uses and parodies the conventions of nineteenth-century realism. The unit will thus examine how the experimental novel in France, questioning its own procedures, is born.
