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Course Description

Summary

This course will examine French representations of America in literature, political philosophy, and film. We will focus on the paradoxes inherent in the French fascination with America as well as how America has served as a figure for the expression of French anxieties about modernity and a changing world. Beginning with Montaigne, Buffon, and Tocqueville we will analyze the association of America with an idealized simplicity; later we will study America as a symbol of dehumanizing industrialization and modernity in the work of Céline and Duhamel. The work of Stéphane Bouquet and Bernard-Henri Lévy will offer a view of contemporary France’s ever-changing fascination with America. Intermediate-high level.