FRENCH 072 - Forms of Desire: Pre-Modern French Voices

What voices can we hear in pre-modern literature? How did literary forms (the novel, tragic drama, lyric poetry) emerge or evolve over the course of several centuries? In this class, we will examine a wide range of texts from the 12th to the 18th centuries, from a diverse range of forms, genres, and authors. Rather than trying to establish an exhaustive history of literary form, we will conduct close, contextualised readings focussing on questions of desire; gender and sexuality will be in question just as much as narrative and poetic desire. What kinds of desires are provoked and frustrated in and by these various texts in their various historic contexts? How can poetic or novelistic form itself convey desire in its different forms? In what ways is it possible to speak of queer desire in the pre-modern period?