Literature and the Relational Self in Contemporary French Prose

This course focuses on developments of the past thirty years in French and francophone literature (the francophone component including Martinique, Guadeloupe, Senegal, Canada, and Vietnam). It examines especially-in contexts informed by issues of class, gender, race, migration, and generation-multiple ways in which a self is constituted and evolves in relation to other selves, to groups, and to history. The texts to be read include both fiction and nonfiction of an autobiographical inflection. Emphasis will be placed not only on substantive relational questions but also on the formal literary resources of which these authors make use.