This course will focus on how the nineteenth century French novel

Forms of the Novel: Historical, Political, Aesthetic, Technological
Graduate Seminar, French Dept. Spring 2012
Professors: Emily Apter and Philippe Roger
Apter: Office hrs. Tues: 4:15-6 Rm. 610
NB: The first meeting of this class will be postponed until Feb. 2. For class on Feb
2, please read selections from Stendhal, Le Rouge et le Noir and La Chartreuse de
Parme.
This course will focus on how the nineteenth century French novel produced
diverse forms to accommodate the advent of historical events, political and
ideological transformations (revolution, wars, class conflict), new technologies
and medial inventions (telegraphs, trains, cars), information management,
intellectual “dadas” (collectomania, theology, materialism, feminism), fashion,
intellectual fads and commodity fetishisms (with emphasis on the metaphysics of
the object within realism). Authors will include Stendhal, Balzac, Flaubert, Zola,
Villiers de l’Isle-Adam and Mirbeau. Novels and narrative excerpts will be
supplemented by critical texts ranging from criticism of the historical and
ideological novel, to essays drawn from “thing theory” and object-oriented
ontology. The course will be conducted in English and French so students must be
comfortable speaking both languages. Texts will be primarily in French.
One oral presentation and term paper required.
Required Texts (Please order directly from Amazon.fr)
Stendhal, Le Rouge et le Noir (Folio Classique)
Stendhal Lucien Leuwen (Livre de poche ed. Michel Crouzet)
Balzac, Le Cousin Pons (Folio Classique)
Flaubert, Madame Bovary (Folio Classique)
Flaubert, Bouvard et Pécuchet (Folio Classique)
Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, L’Eve future (Folio Classique)
Readings:
Feb. 2. Class I. Stendhal, Le Rouge et le Noir Chapters I-VII
Class II. Stendhal, La Chartreuse de Parme Chapters I – VI (Blackboard)
Class III. Stendhal Lucien Leuwen Part I, chaps I-IX, Part II, XXXVIII-XLV
Classes IV-V.
Balzac, Traité de la vie élégante, (Blackboard)
Le Cousin Pons
Classes VI-VII.
Zola, Selections: on Blackboard
Au bonheur des dames
La Bête humaine
Germinal
Le Docteur Pascal
Classes VIII-X
Flaubert, Madame Bovary
Bouvard et Pécuchet
Class XI-XII Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, L’Eve future
Class XIII Mirbeau, la 628-E8 (Gallica)
Critical Readings:
Books and Essays will be on Reserve (Bobst) or available on Blackboard
Perry Anderson, The Historical Novel in LRB (July 2011)
David Cunningham, “Capitalist Epics: Abstraction, Totality and the Theory of the Novel”
Radical Philosophy 163 (Sep/Oct 2010)
Jacques Dubois, Stendhal. Une sociologie romanesque, La Découverte, 2007.
Dubois, “Stendhal romancier politique” Formes et modèles de l'engagement littéraire
(XVe-XXIe siècles), coll. Kaempfer, Florey et Meizoz ed., 2006
Oswald Ducrot, “La description sémantique des énoncés français et la notion de
présupposition” (L’Homme, 1968, I).
Susan Suleiman, Authoritarian Fictions: The Ideological Novel as a Literary Genre
Fredric Jameson, Representing Capitalism
Jacques Rancière, La parole muette
Rancière, La Haine de la démocratie
Marielle Macé, “Balzac, inventeur de l’`esthétique de l’existence?’ Le Traité de la vie
élégante et la Théorie,” Le Magazine Littéraire July 1, 2011.
Michel Guérin, La Politique de Stendhal
Graham Harman, Guerrilla Metaphysics: Phenomenology and the Carpentry of Things
Elaine Freedgood, The Ideas in Things
Emily Apter, “Cabinet Secrets,” in Feminizing the Fetish
Bruno Latour, “Mixing Humans with non-Humans: Sociology of a Door-Closer”
Christina Lupton, “The Fictions of the New Materialism” (with permission of author)
Leah Price, “From The History of a Book to a `History of the Book,’” Representations
108 (Fall 2009)
Wolfgang Schivelbusch, The Railway Journey: The Industrialization of Time and Space
in the Nineteenth Century
Annette Michelson, “On the Eve of the Future: The Reasonable Facsimile and the
Philosophical Toy” (October, 1984)
Mary Anne Doane, Technophilia: Technology, Representation, and the Feminine