FREN 6040

The Race of the Poet (1780-1949)

Course Description

Course information provided by the 2021-2022 Catalog.

A critical exploration of the phrase "la race des poetes," with and without consideration of racial-colonial power. 1780 marks the release of "La mort d'Abel," by Nicolas Gilbert, whose influence is to be felt from Vigny to Baudelaire and Mallarme on ideas of racial purity, innate poetic genius and determinism- to the third iteration of Cesaire's Cahier, whose successive rewritings re-articulate the transcendental gift of poetry with a critique of colonial racism, in the wake of both Rimbaud and Verhaeren or some 19th century Haitian poets (e.g. Lochard, Ardouin). A meta-concern in the seminar is to contrast the intellective profusion of poetic texts situating the racial with the intellectual reductionism of identity-based readings of the literary.

Prerequisites/Corequisites Prerequisite: fluency in French.

When Offered Spring.

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