FREN 10.23 The French Atlantic
This course, introduction to French literature, is a survey of French literature that focuses on one topic: the Atlantic world. As we read texts from each period, we will discover different versions of the Atlantic world, one that exists between many French Atlantic spaces: Caribbean, North American, African, and European. Across these representations, the Atlantic exists as a prism through which authors investigate cross-cultural romance, cultural practices, and the relative notions of beauty. The Atlantic also emerges to prominence during France’s first empire. Before the eighteenth century, the Mediterranean, as an imaginary space of empire and cross-cultural contact, eclipses the Atlantic. As the first and then the second French Empire grows, the Atlantic world takes on a stronger presence in the French imaginary.