CRWT 40.09 Obsessive Affinities Contemporary French & American poetry

This deeply experiential course examines the rich history of transatlantic desire, negotiated over the love of poetry. The United States has always figured heavily in the collective French imaginary ever since the American Revolution, for instance in the works of Tocqueville and Chateaubriand. American literature, however, gains particular prominence toward the mid-twentieth century with the transatlantic travels of Simone de Beauvoir, André Breton, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Philippe Sollers among authors, to the point that French writers began wondering how one can even be French in the first place. The course explores this crisis in national identity through a series of important poetic Franco-American friendships and collaborations: Edmond Jabès and Rosmarie Waldrop; Emmanuel Hocquard and Michael Palmer; Serge Pey and Allen Ginsberg; the Fondation Royaumont; the poetry collective double change; among others.

Cross Listed Courses

COLT 31.02 FRIT 37.08

Degree Requirement Attributes

Dist:LIT; WCult:W

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Department-Specific Course Categories

Course Group III