French 482: Detective Fiction Spring 2016 Professor Susanna Lee

French 482: Detective Fiction
Spring 2016
Professor Susanna Lee
Office: ICC 421
Phone: 687-4254
E-mail: [email protected]
Office Hours: Monday and Wednesday 12:30-1:30 PM and by appointment
Course Description:
This course introduces students to the rich and varied genre that is
French detective fiction, and to French history and culture through the
lens of that literature. We will read representative crime fiction texts
from the twentieth century as well as critical articles. Focus will be on
plot, narrative structure, the character of the detective, questions of
national and cultural identity, wars of the twentieth century,
representations of law, justice, and social order, connections among
legal, moral, and narrative authority, postmodern crises of morality, and
the rise of violence as spectacle.
Crime fiction provides a singular barometer of social, cultural, and
political circumstances, as well as an entry into fundamental -- and
interdisciplinary -- questions of justice, law, and social order. As France
is the country where crime fiction -- both of the Anglo-American and of
the homegrown variety -- has perhaps met with the greatest critical and
commercial success, French crime fiction is an important element of
French culture, as well as a window thereon. It has in recent decades
become a rich focus of interdisciplinary academic study and allows for
approaches historical, psychoanalytic, formalist, and jurisprudential
(many of these generated by French critics). We will explore these
various approaches, combining close reading with historical and
philosophical contextualization.
Prerequisites:
Gateway sequence (250-251). This course is open to French majors and
other students with a strong background and fluency in French.
Generally, it is advisable for students to have either studied abroad or
taken upper-level (300-400) French classes before taking this course.
Crime fiction uses complicated language and a fair amount of argot;
furthermore, both in class and in the papers, students are required to
conduct fairly sophisticated discussions in French.
Required Texts:
Honoré de Balzac, L’Auberge rouge (1831)
Edgar Allan Poe, The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841)
Georges Simenon, L’Ombre chinoise (1931)
Leo Malet, 120, Rue de la Gare (1943)
Jean-Patrick Manchette, La position du tireur couché (1981)
Didier Daeninckx, Meurtres pour memoire (1983)
Fred Vargas, Pars vite et reviens tard (2001)
These texts are available at the Leavey Bookstore or through Amazon or
ABE.
Critical articles will be made available on the course blog (see below for
information about the blog). A provisional sampling is listed on the
syllabus below; a longer general reading list on the topic of crime fiction
is appended to this syllabus. It is also recommended that students obtain
a French-French dictionary such as Le Petit Robert.
Written Work:
There will be two critical essays on a selected text or theme: one 6-8page essay due March 2 and a final paper of 11-13 pages due during
finals week. Both papers are to be written in French, typed, doublespaced. Accents should be generated with the computer. Minor language
mistakes will not be graded down, but systematically poor grammar and
spelling will.
For most of you, French is a foreign language. Nonetheless, papers
should be thought as well as written in French: in other words, do not
prepare your ideas in English and then try to convert them into French.
And certainly do not – for reasons of quality as well as of the Honor
Code, see below – prepare your ideas in English and try to Googletranslate them into French. There will of course be some translation at
the level of individual words and expressions, but you should think in
French as much as possible.
Both papers must be submitted on the dates due. Late work will be
penalized five points for every day the paper is late, unless the student
has a written dean's or medical excuse or has made prior arrangements
with the professor.
Blog: This class uses Georgetown’s Digital Commons.
https://blogs.commons.georgetown.edu/fren-482-spring2016/
Each student will post to the blog – in French - on given prompts every
two weeks or so. These posts will be like mini-response papers. There is
no set word length or limit to posts, but posts should be discursive and
thoughtful (no one word answers!). All students should read all posts
prior to the next class. Generally, posts will be due at midnight on a
Monday (the night between Monday and Tuesday), and you will read the
posts of others for class on Wednesday. Your writing on the blog will not
be evaluated as formal writing. You may comment on others’ posts,
though of course civility and respect are required. Blog post assignments
are not printed on the syllabus but will be given verbally in class and in
writing on the blog as the semester progresses.
In-Class Work:
This class is a seminar, and active participation in every class is required.
This means that you must not only have read and thought about all the
material assigned, but also be ready to discuss it during class. If you do
not participate, I cannot know whether it is because you are timid, tired,
or simply unprepared. Therefore, it is the responsibility of each student
to come to every class with topics of discussion ready to introduce.
Each student will do one ten-minute oral presentation. The sign-up list
for these presentations will circulate once the add-drop period is over.
No laptops or other electronica in class. This means that when we study
stories or articles that are posted as PDFs on Blackboard, you must print
out the article (and thus be able to take notes on and highlight it) rather
than bringing your entire computer to class.
If you miss class, contact someone for the notes. We will make a class
phone list for this purpose. I myself am glad to respond to your e-mails,
though not of the “did I miss anything?” variety. Four unexcused
absences will compromise the grade.
Honor Code:
All written work must conform to the Georgetown Honor Code. Ideas
and language must be entirely your own. No lectures or summaries from
the internet, no Wikipedia, no anything in any language by anyone else,
even if it is marked “public domain.” The use of computer translation
programs is of course strictly prohibited. If you do use secondary sources
in the final paper, these must be correctly attributed, and I will show you
how to cite and footnote properly. Plagiarism will result in an F on the
assignment and possibly in the class.
Grading:
Midterm paper 25%, final paper 40%, participation 25%, oral
presentation 10%. Participation includes attendance, blog posts, and
regular active engagement (answering questions, venturing
interpretations) in class.
French Detective Fiction
Professor Lee
Syllabus
January 13
Introduction. History of French crime fiction.
January 18
January 20
Martin Luther King Day
Tzvetan Todorov, La typologie du roman policier”
Honoré de Balzac, “L’Auberge Rouge” (1831)
January 25
January 27
Poe, “Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841)
Le roman policier: Simenon, L’Ombre chinoise (1931)
February 1
February 3
Simenon, L’Ombre chinoise (1931)
Le roman noir: Malet, 120, rue de la Gare (1943)
February 8
February 10
Malet, 120, rue de la Gare
Malet, 120, rue de la Gare
February 15
February 17
Presidents Day
Malet, 120, rue de la Gare
Claire Gorrara: ‘Malheurs et ténèbres: Narratives of Social Disorder in
Léo Malet’s 120, rue de la Gare’
February 22
February 24
Film
Film
February 29
March 2
Introduction to the Série Noire
Raymond Chandler, “The Simple Art of Murder”
Patrick Raynal, “Le roman noir est l’avenir de la fiction”
Benoît Tadié, “Enoncer l’Amérique: les langues fantômes du polar”
Midterm Paper Due
March 7
March 9
Spring Break
Spring Break
March 14
March 16
Le néo-polar: Manchette, La position du tireur couché (1981)
Manchette, La position du tireur couché
March 21
March 23
Manchette, La position du tireur couché
Manchette, La position du tireur couché
Film: The Gunman
March 28
March 30
Easter Break
Daeninckx, Meurtres pour Memoire (1983)
April 4
Daeninckx, Meurtres pour Memoire
April 6
Daeninckx, Meurtres pour Memoire
April 11
April 13
Daeninckx, Meurtres pour Memoire
Daeninckx, Meurtres pour Memoire
April 18
April 20
Vargas, Pars vite et reviens tard (2001)
Vargas, Pars vite et reviens tard
April 25
April 27
Vargas, Pars vite et reviens tard
Vargas, Pars vite et reviens tard
May 2
Conclusion
Secondary Source Reading List: Studies of French Crime Fiction
Claude Mesplède (eds) Dictionnaire des literatures policières (2007)
Annie Collovald and Eric Neveu, Lire le noir, enquête sur les lecteurs de récits policiers (2004)
sociological survey of reader trends and tastes
Franck Evrard, Lire le roman policier (1996)
Yves Reuter, Le roman policier (1997)
Boileau-Narcejac, Le roman policier (Payot 1994; reprint)
Sue Neale, ‘An Introduction to French Crime Fiction’,
www.crimeculture.com/Contents/FrenchCrimeFiction.htm
Pierre Verdaguer, La Séduction policière: signes de croissance d’un genre réputé mineur (1999)
Les Temps modernes, ‘Pas d’orchidées pour les Temps Modernes’ 595 (1997) special issue of the
journal Les Temps Modernes on the French roman noir (PN 3448. D4.R6)
Robert Deleuse, ‘Petite histoire du roman noir français’ in Les Temps modernes 595, pp.53-87
Stephen Noreiko, ‘From Serious to Popular Fiction’ in The Cambridge Companion to the French
Novel, ed. Tim Unwin , pp.179-193
Yale French Studies (journal), 108, (2005), themed around nineteenth and twentieth-century
‘Crime Fictions,’ edited Susanna Lee and Andrea Goulet
Jean-Noel Blanc, Polarville: images de la ville dans le roman policier (1991)
Jacques Dubois, Roman policier ou la modernité (1992), study of three French/Francophone
crime authors, Gaston Leroux, Georges Simenon and Sébastien Japrisot
Marc Lits, Roman policier: introduction à la théorie et à l’histoire d’un genre littéraire (1999)
Elfriede Muller and Alexander Ruoff, Le Polar français: crime et histoire (2002)
Claire Gorrara, The Roman Noir in Post-War French Culture: Dark Fictions (2003),
Claire Gorrara (ed), French Crime Fiction (2009)