Graduate
PhD in French
Literature and Politics
This interdisciplinary track is dedicated to studying literary representations in their political context.
The set of courses offered in this area all analyze the complex interaction between literary works and social reality. These courses, examine how literature reflects a certain image of the social order, while, at the same time it influences the image a society has of itself.
This interdisciplinary track allows students to develop their own conceptualization of the interconnection between literature and politics by studying, for example, figures ranging from the medieval clerc, the Renaissance humanist and the Enlightenment philosophe to the Romantic poet, the intellectual and the postmodern theorist.
Our courses combine two approaches to the question of the relations between literature and politics. Some focus on the way literary works (often implicitly) represent the socio-political order through the way the way they depict the place of the individual in society. Whether they tend to strengthen and support this order, or on the contrary tend to question and disrupt it, most poems, plays, novels and films carry with them an implicit assessment of the way individuals are made to fit within the structures and hierarchies prevalent at each period.
Other courses focus on the way writers have explicitly addressed political issues: while poets, playwrights, novelists and filmmakers often directly comment upon socio-political issues, political theorists also have recourse to rhetorical tools directly drawn from literary devices.
Starting from close textual analysis, our courses both situate literature in a political perspective and look at political discourse from a literary and rhetorical point of view.
Although our students are invited (and required) to take courses in Political Science, History, Philosophy, or Film Studies to complement their knowledge and diversify their approaches, our core courses offer them a perspective that is specific to a literary program.
As literary scholars, we are in a unique position to study the multifarious manifestations of the social imagination.
In addition to what are usually considered literary texts (poetry, theater, novels), our approach also includes other types of discourses and narratives (political treatises, pamphlets, newspaper articles, films) where this representation of the political order takes place.
While our courses tend to focus on material produced in the French-speaking World, some issues
can only be understood when situated within a wider European context, which is why some of the
courses that satisfy the concentration reach across national and linguistic borders.
Among the topics discussed in this area of concentration, one can list such themes as: the place
of the individual in medieval society; the image of the ruler in medieval writings (as manifested
in the "mirrors of princes", letters to Kings and in the literature of the Hundred Years
War); the images of the body politic in medieval and early modern France; the evolution of the
relationship between the citizen and the State; the political imagination of the Enlightenment;
the role of the Intellectuals in modern French society; issues of style and responsibility in post-war
France; the politics of difference and identity in contemporary French fiction. (Some of these
topics constitute the central object of a course, while others are presented as sub-themes within
a broader survey.)
By studying the representations of political issues, approached in the primary texts within their historical context, this interdisciplinary track produces degrees that combine a solid and wide knowledge of European political history with an original reflection on the place of literature in contemporary societies.
Structure
Students specializing in this area must fulfill the following requirements:
- Out of eight courses that have to be taken with a letter grade, and four that can be audited, at least six have to come from the list of courses qualifying for this concentration.
- Between two to four courses have to be taken in a department other than French and Italian (in the departments of Political Science, History, Philosophy, German, Spanish, Slavic, English as well as in the Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Women's Studies, West European Studies and Cultural Studies programs).
- The comprehensive examinations are designed on the same format as those of a regular PhD in French languages and literatures. However, the topics of research have to fit the perspective developed in the area of concentration.
- Dissertations can either focus on one specific point of interaction between literature and politics studied through different periods, or focus on a particular question linking politics and literature within one single period (or one single author).