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The Twentieth-Century French Humanist Novel: Malraux and Camus

Overview

  • Credit value: 15 credits at Level 6
  • Convenor: Damian Catani
  • Prerequisite: minimum of French language level 3
  • Assessment: a 2500-word essay (60%) and one-hour 20-minute in-class test (40%)

Module description

This module will explore two major twentieth-century novelists - André Malraux and Albert Camus - who are often referred to as ‘humanist’ writers. The module will compare and contrast their respective novels through this humanist lens in order to tease out some of the major political and philosophical themes they address: namely, war, colonialism, revolution, innocence, imprisonment, death and truth. In this regard, the novels offer an intellectual contour map of some of the major issues with which France and Western Europe more generally were grappling in the years preceding and following the Second World War.

TEXTS

  • Albert Camus: La Chute (1956)
  • André Malraux: La Condition Humaine (1933)

Learning objectives

By the end of this module, you will be able to:

  • apply literary analytical skills (thematic and stylistic) to the chosen texts in the original French
  • understand the cultural history of the period
  • use an advanced linguistic level of French in the discussion and analysis of literary texts
  • analyse and understand the complex and wide-ranging conceptual paradigms (such as ‘humanism’) that pertain to the primary texts.