Department of French and Italian

Prerequisite: F250, F265, equivalent or consent of department.

Fairies, monsters, ghosts, and magic: An introduction to the supernatural in French literature and media. As a crucial component of the human imaginary, the supernatural is lurking everywhere. Do you know that the supernatural is present in the story Star Wars? Or that the Greek origin of the word dragon, “derk” or “drk”- meaning “to see” refers to a big snake who could stare at you and not necessarily to the winged creature pictured in movies? First represented through myths and legends, it later came to prominence in literature. Recently, with the development of mass media, the supernatural has taken a more important place in our wider culture, especially among a young public. A whole generation grew up with Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and some are maybe fans of Games of Thrones, or at least have watched or heard about it. Being surrounded by mass media dealing with vampires, superheroes, zombies, demons, etc., can make the borders between supernatural figures and genres fuzzy. The aim of this class is to provide students with notions and historic-social explanations of the different genres in which supernatural is illustrated throughout the time from ancient myth to 19th-20th century literature and across media. By the end of the class, students will be conversant in the different representations of and the varied uses of the supernatural in multiple forms of storytelling. Students will encounter myths, legends, monsters, medieval marvelous, fairy tales, vampires, fantastic, modern fantasy, and science fiction through French literary texts, movies, and video games.

Conducted in French.

FRIT-F 300   #34384   9:45A-11:00A      MW         AC C107               Halley A

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