Paris in French Literature

Each seminar session was structured around a period, an author, and a theme related to a specific area of Paris. We:

• explored the Quartier Latin and the early history of Parisian universities with François Rabelais’s Pantagruel (1532);
• then, Paris as a place of theatrical activity and street performances with seventeenth-century accounts of Parisian fairs;
• Haussmann’s renovation of Paris and the rise of Parisian department stores with Emile Zola’s Au Bonheur des Dames (1883);
• the cultural effervescence of Montparnasse in the inter-war period with Alice Prin’s (aka Kiki de Montparnasse) autobiographical writings;
• the development of automobile factories and North-African immigration in the 1950s and 1960s with Claire Etcherelli’s Elise ou la vraie vie (1967);
• the experience of second- and third-generation immigrés in Parisian suburbs with Faïza Guène’s Kiffe-kiffe demain (2004).

These sessions were complemented by several activities directly linked to the topics discussed: guided tours of various Parisian neighbourhoods (Le Quartier Latin, Montparnasse, La Goutte-d'Or), theatre trips (Molière’s Le Bourgeois gentilhomme at the Comédie-Française), museum visits (Le Musée d’Orsay).

These two weeks of intensive group activity were followed by two weeks of self-guided independent study in the city, during which students researched and wrote their summative coursework essay, and wrote blogposts for an interactive map of Paris documenting their personal explorations of the city.