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University of Dublin
Trinity College
Department of French
Senior Sophister — Guide to Courses 2015-16
Two-Subject Moderatorship
Please Retain for Reference
This booklet should be read in conjunction with relevant entries in the University
Calendar. In case of any conflict between the Handbook and the Calendar, the
provisions of the Calendar shall apply.
Lecturing staff
Individual telephones can be accessed from outside College by pre-fixing (01) 896;
email addresses are followed by <@tcd.ie>.
Dr Sarah Alyn-Stacey, room 4105, tel. 2686, email <salynsta>
Dr Edward Arnold, room 4106, tel. 1836, email <ejarnold>
Dr James Hanrahan, room 4107, tel. 1841, email <hanrahaj>
Dr Rachel Hoare, room 4103, tel. 1842, email <rmhoare>
Dr Alexandra Lukes, room 4104, tel. 1977, email <lukesa>
Dr Hannes Opelz, room 4111, tel. 1077. email <opelzh>
Dr Paule Salerno-O'Shea, room 4113, tel. 1472, email <psalerno>
Departmental Offices
(Sinead Doran/Mary Kelly), Room 4109, tel. 1553, email, <french>
(Tracy Corbett) Room 4089, tel. 1333, email, <tcorbett
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Please read carefully the regulations and course-descriptions which follow, and
complete the form (on the next page) in the following manner. Please ensure you are
happy with your choices as once made these May Not Be Changed due to timetable
constraints etc.
1. Name four Topics in order of preference.
2. Obtain the signature of a member of staff for your choice of special subject.
3. Return the form to the Departmental Office, Room 4109, by 12.00 noon on
Wednesday 18th February 2015
N.B. As far as possible the French Department will try and accommodate
students in the courses of their choice, however, the department is not in a
position to guarantee that all courses offered will take place. The number of
students opting for a particular course, timetable constraints and availability of
staff has to be taken into account.
Students intending to go 'off books' in 2015/16 should still complete the form, but
indicate their intention at the appropriate point below. They should note that completion
of this form does not in itself constitute a request for permission, which should be
sought from the Senior Lecturer via their tutor at as early a stage as possible. Students
who obtain permission, and then change their mind, should notify the department
immediately.
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Department of French SS Topics
Please Complete and Return this form to the Department Office, Room 4109, by
12 noon on Wednesday 19th February 2015
Name: (in block capitals): ________________________________________________
Student Number:
_______
Student e-mail: _______________________________________________________
SS Topics: (state 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th choices in order of preference):
1.
2.
3.
4.
Special Subject Dissertation:
Subject area:
Signature of intended supervisor:
Year Off-Books: I intend/do not intend to spend next year off books.
(Delete as applicable.)
I confirm that I have received a copy of the departmental statement concerning courses
and assessment for the Senior Sophister year 2015/16
Signature _____________________________ Date: _______________________
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Senior Sophister Requirements and Assessment Procedures
The requirements for Senior Sophister students in TSM French in 2015/16 are as follows:
1. Language: All students are required to attend language classes, and submit regular
written work.
2. Topics: Students select two Topics from the range offered. All choices are subject to
availability, to timetable constraints and to the approval of the Head of Department. An
assessment essay (2,500 words) is to be submitted in respect of each topic. One of the two
assessment essays is to be written in French. The first essay is to be submitted by 12.00
hrs on Monday 18 January 2016, the second by 12.00 hrs on Friday 25 March 2016 to the
Departmental Office, Room 4109. Titles for essays will be published in the SS Handbook
which will be available on the French Department website http://www.tcd.ie/French/ at the
beginning of the academic year. For details of courses, see list below.
3. Special Subject: Each student selects a special subject of his or her own choice, in
consultation with an appropriate member of staff (for details of staff interests, see below).
Please note that members of staff are instructed not to accept more than their quota of
supervisees, and the fact that a student wishes to be supervised by a member of staff does
not guarantee that the member of staff will be able or willing to act. It would obviously be
prudent to consult with the supervisor of your choice at an early stage. The candidate's
work on this special subject is to be embodied in a dissertation of 9,000 to 12,000 words, to
be written in English or French, or in an alternative piece of submitted work of a different
nature but of comparable substance, to be submitted in either case by 12.00 hrs on
Monday 7 March 2016 to Room 4109. A computer-generated word-count must be included
on the title page of your submitted dissertation. Please note that, if you exceed the set
word-limit, your dissertation will be returned with an instruction to reduce the length
appropriately. It is the student’s responsibility to ensure (s)he maintains adequate contact
with her/his supervisor, who will provide guidance on how to improve content.
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The assessment for Moderatorship Part II for 2015/16 is as follows:
1. Language paper I (Translation into French and résumé)
2. Language paper II (Translation from French and essay)
3. Topic I (submitted work and examination)
4. Topic II (submitted work and examination)
5. Special subject (dissertation) or equivalent to be submitted in English or French
6. Viva voce examination
The oral examination takes place in the presence of an extern examiner. As part of this
examination, candidates will be required to deliver an oral exposé on one of two subjects
chosen by the candidate, and approved in advance. The examination is followed
immediately by discussion of the candidate’s dissertation, which may result in a
modification of the provisional mark given.
Candidates should note that, following comments from extern examiners concerning an
unduly narrow focus of study in some instances, all ‘Topic’ papers will carry the rubric that
candidates should avoid excessive overlap with dissertation subjects.
More detailed information relating to exam requirements and marking will be published in
the Senior Sophister Handbook which will be posted, in due course, on the Department
Website.
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Senior Sophister Courses 2015/16
NB Where a course is undersubscribed, the course may not be offered.
1.
French Cinema: Perspectives FR4048 (Dr Alyn Stacey)
______________________________________________________________________
Aims: The aim of this course is to

provide students with an insight into the work of some of the major French film
makers/foreign directors working in French of the twentieth and twenty-first
centuries.

show how French film functions as a medium to explore a range of themes, many
of them socio-political in character, notably childhood, memory, the perception
of women, the representation of the past, identity, love and desire,
colonialism, consumerism and conflict.

offer insights into a range of genres characterizing French cinema, for example,
the war film, film noir, thriller, the cinéma du look and the heritage film.

Provide students with the necessary skills to approach and interpret film.
Objectives: By the end of the course, students will be

acquainted with the work of some of the major French film makers and foreign
directors working in French in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

familiar with a range of ideas and genres which reflect a cross-section of the
cinematic preoccupations of French cinema in the twentieth and twenty-first
centuries.

acquainted with cinematic techniques and methodologies for analyzing film.
Course Structure: Teaching will be by lecture, student papers and discussion primarily
through the medium of French. Screenings of the films will be arranged. The course is
structured as follows:
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Michaelmas Term
1-2
3-6
Introduction: French cinema (genre, theory etc.)

Tous les matins du monde (Alain Corneau,
1991)
7-10

La Reine Margot (Patrice Chéreau, 1994)
11-14

La Grande Illusion (Jean Renoir, 1937)
14-17

Du rififi chez les hommes (Jules Dassin, 1955)
17-20

Le Samouraï (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1967)

L’Armée de l’ombre (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1969)

Le Ballon rouge (Albert Lamorisse, 1956)
1-2

Crin Blanc (Albert Lamorisse, 1953)
3-6

Les 400 coups (François Truffaut, 1959)
7-10

L’Année dernière à Marienbad (Alain Resnais,
21-22
Hilary Term
1961)

Nuit et brouillard (Alain Resnais, 1955)
11-14

A bout de souffle (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960)
15-17

Nikita (Jean-Luc Besson, 1990)

Angel-A (Jean-Luc Besson, 2005)
18-19

Sans toit ni loi (Agnès Varda, 1985)
20-22

Caché (Michael Haneke, 2005)
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2. La Belle Époque Et Le Surréalisme (FR4049 Dr Arnold, Dr Lukes)
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La belle époque (Dr Arnold – Michaelmas Term)
The first semester will explore the context of Belle-Epoque France from the
foundation of the Third Republic in 1870 until the outbreak of war in 1914.
The objectives of this course are to give students a good understanding of
the intellectual, political, social and historical climate of France during the
early Third Republic. This approach will notably focus upon manifestations of
extreme right-wing thought and French pre-fascism which originated in the
intellectual climate of the Belle Epoque and its irrationalist "fin-de-siècle”
mood. The interest of studying the intellectual and historical precursors of
French counter-revolutionary thought and fascism resides in the fact that
many of the themes developed in France in the Belle Epoque fed the
ideology of Italian fascism and Nazism. This has led many scholars to
consider France as being the country which "invented" fascism.
This part of the course will study the individuals (Drumont, Barrès, Maurras)
and movements (Action Française, Ligue de la Patrie Française, Ligue des
Patriotes) involved in events such as Boulangism and the Dreyfus Affair, and
the concomitant antisemitism, racialism and nationalism. The succession of
guerres franco-françaises is a recurring theme which helps to clarify the
dynamics of confrontation in late 19th-century French politics, this “vieille
propension gauloise aux divisions et aux querelles” in the words of de Gaulle.
The writings of Communist, Marxist and Marxist revisionist theorists (Guesde,
Jaurès, Blum) will also be briefly studied to give a contextual perspective to
these emerging anti-enlightenment themes.
Le surréalisme (Dr Lukes – Hilary Term)
The second semester will explore the literary and artistic movement that
dominated the first quarter of the twentieth century: Surrealism.
The beginning of the twentieth century witnessed an explosion of artistic
creativity in France and across Europe. Artists, writers, and poets began
questioning the conditions that had led to the madness of the First World War
and expressed doubts about whether art was capable of representing the
chaos of the times. Literature in particular became the testing ground for
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critiquing man’s claim to rationality: by revealing the limits of our mastery over
language and the insufficiency of our linguistic tools, writers and poets not
only explored the ways in which our conventional processes of sense-making
could be destabilized but also pushed literature to confront its limits by
looking at what may lie beyond them.
This part of the course will explore these fertile years according to a two-fold
approach: on the one hand, by focusing on the different literary practices
developed by poets and writers to respond to the madness of the times (such
as Surrealist explorations of the fine line between dream and reality, sense
and nonsense, reason and unreason—particularly in the works of Apollinaire
and Breton); on the other hand, by analysing the significance of these
practices as a way of questioning the very conception of literary limits
(exploring the cross-disciplinary dialogue between visual and verbal that
motivated painters, film-makers and photographers—such as Dalí, Magritte,
and Man Ray).
3.
Language and Society in the French-speaking world: status,
diversity and function. FR4043 (Dr Hoare)
_____________________________________________________________
This course comprises a sociolinguistic exploration of the French language, and its
varieties throughout La Francophonie. The focus is on the relationship between
language and society, covering such topics as language variation and innovation,
bilingualism, diglossia, ethnolinguistics and code-switching, with specific reference
to the French language. The Topic will comprise two main parts:
Part one
The position of French in the world.
We will examine the diversity of the French-speaking world and the function
of French in specific countries and regions:

Is French a ‘world language’?

French as a first language in Europe and North America
o Case studies: language related rivalries
o Switzerland, Belgium, Canada
o Multilingualism and language policy
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
French as a second language: the colonial heritage in Africa and the
Dom Tom territories.
o Multilingualism and language policy
o Linguistic and non-linguistic factors
o Student case studies
Part two
Exploring linguistic variation in Francophonie
In part two, the focus will shift to individual language features, and the local
varieties of French outside of France will be examined.

Europe: Belgium and Suisse romande: pronunciation, grammar and
vocabulary

The French language in Canada

Regional French in Africa

French and Creole
Teaching will be by lecture, seminar and student presentation. The material
studied will come from a variety of sources, including linguistic journals (these
will be made available to students on Blackboard), audio materials and
electronic sources. In addition, students should consult the materials on the
website of La délégation générale à la langue française et aux langues
de France. http://www.dglf.culture.gouv.fr/
Recommended reading:
Ager, D. (1995) Francophonie in the 1990’s: Problems and opportunities,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ager D. (1990) Sociolinguistics and Contemporary French, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press
Ball, R. The French-speaking World: A practical introduction to sociolinguistic
issues. London: Routledge.
Kline, M. and Mellerski, N. (2004) Issues in the French-Speaking World. CT:
Greenwood Press.
Sanders, C. (ed.) (1993) French Today: Language in its social context,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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4. The Art of Representation: From Plato to Artaud (FR4xxx Dr Opelz)
_____________________________________________________________
As far as Western aesthetics is concerned, our categories for making sense
of art – whether we accept or reject them, forgo or forget them, deconstruct or
reconstruct them – are still fundamentally determined by what Plato and the
Greeks called mimesis (generally translated as “representation”). Century
after century, and however powerfully undermined, the Platonic model to
interpret the practice, process, or experience of art continues to dominate
Western thought and culture, giving rise to endless debates both inside and
outside the philosophical field. At the heart of these debates lies the question
of theatre. To this day, it is as if the question of representation cannot be
adequately addressed – or indeed addressed at all – without addressing the
question of theatre.
Moving across different centuries, the purpose of this module is to explore the
political, philosophical, affective, and aesthetic implications of understanding
the art of representation through theatre. Three key French figures will guide
us through the pressing issues that Western theories of the theatre compel
us to confront: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1788), Stéphane Mallarmé
(1842-1898), and Antonin Artaud (1896-1948). After examining extracts from
works by Plato and Aristotle, we shall look at the ways in which Rousseau,
Mallarmé, and Artaud decisively engage with – and problematize – received
notions of theatre and representation. As such, the module will offer students
an opportunity to address the issues at stake from a variety of perspectives
(that of a philosopher, a poet, and a dramatist) and periods (the eighteenth,
nineteenth, and twentieth centuries), as well as to engage with more
contemporary interpretations of theatre (Derrida, Lacoue-Labarthe,
Taminiaux, etc.).
Designed to assist students in expanding both their analytical skills and their
conceptual language, the module will be especially useful for those with an
interest in literary theory and, more generally, in the age-old conversation
between philosophy and literature. Whilst prior knowledge of philosophical
texts is not a requirement, students should be prepared to engage with
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philosophical questions. Taught in French, the module is assessed by an
essay (2,500-3000 words) and a three-hour written examination.
Primary texts:
Platon, extraits de La République, trad. P. Pachet (Gallimard, coll. Folio
Essais, 1993).
Aristote, extraits de La Poétique, trad. R. Dupont-Roc et J. Lallot (Le Seuil,
coll. Poétique, 1980).
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Lettre à d’Alembert sur les spectacles, éd. M. Buffat
(Flammarion, coll. GF, 2003).
Stéphane Mallarmé, “Crayonné au théâtre”, in Igitur, Divagations, Un coup de
dés, éd. B. Marchal (Gallimard, coll. NFR/Poésie, 2003).
Antonin Artaud, Le Théâtre et son double (Gallimard, coll. Folio Essais,
1964).
Special Subject 2015/16 (Dissertation)
The choice of a Special Subject is left to the individual student. However, this choice
must be agreed with a member of the teaching staff of the Department of French,
who will act as supervisor. By special arrangement with the head of department,
supervision may be sought from a member of staff in a cognate department. You
should therefore consult members of staff about a dissertation subject at the earliest
opportunity and obtain his or her signature showing agreement in principle. The
following list is intended to give students an idea of each member of staff’s academic
interests. The subject of your dissertation should be indicated on the form supplied,
but it is recognized that this subject may be modified or defined more closely in due
course. The number of students to be supervised by any member of staff will be
limited: you are advised to take action without delay.
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Sarah ALYN-STACEY French Renaissance poetry. French Renaissance literature,
with particular reference to Marc-Claude de Buttet and the court circle of Marguerite
de France, duchesse de Savoie. Classical and Italian influences on French
Renaissance literature. Comparative Renaissance literature (French, English,
Italian). Critical theory, notably its application to Renaissance texts and also the
related concerns of intertextuality and literary hermeneutics. Contemporary cinema.
Edward J. ARNOLD Twentieth-century French intellectual, political and social
history: history of ideas in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Europe; right
and left-wing, counter-revolutionary, fascist and national-populist thought in France,
1880s to the present.
James HANRAHAN Literature, history, culture of the Early Modern period.
Literature of the Enlightenment, particularly Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot.
Historiography of Enlightenment and ancien régime. History of ideas and
histoire des mentalitiés. History of intellectuals and public opinion.
Rachel HOARE Linguistics. Second language acquisition. Sociolinguistics of
French, especially attitudes towards regional languages and varieties in France.
Language variation.
Alexandra LUKES Nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature; relations
between literature, psychoanalysis, philosophy, and linguistics; madness,
nonsense, and marginal forms of writing; translation studies and translation
theory; literary bilingualism; autobiography.
Note: Dr. Lukes is unable to supervise dissertation students in the academic
year 2015/16 due to the timing of her sabbatical leave i.e. Michaelmas Term
2015
Hannes OPELZ 20th-century French literature and thought; relations
between literature, philosophy, politics, and affect; deconstruction; Maurice
Blanchot; Georges Bataille; Jacques Derrida; Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe..
Paule SALERNO-O'SHEA Business French, Direct Marketing.
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