MODERN FRANCE: REBELS, RADICALS, ROMANTICS, REALISTS.
Come spend ten weeks, January through mid-March 2012, studying the most fascinating era of modern France: 1820-1870. Rebels in art, rebels in the street, rebels in the literary world: Delacroix, Corot, Courbet, Manet, Flaubert, Zola, Monet, Renoir, Morisot, Degas, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Seurat, Cezzanne, Baudelaire, Gide, Jarry and more—all these brilliant writers and painters changed modern history forever.
Week 11: "Introduction" Tues Jan 3, 2012
PART ONE: LECTURE
An introduction to the terms of our studies this quarter:
Modern
Classicism
Romanticism
Realism
Naturalism
PART TWO
A look at our novel, Sentimental Education, and an introduction to reading it in the next five weeks.Gustave Flaubert (December 12, 1821 – May 8, 1880) was a French writer who is counted among the greatest Western novelists. He is known especially for his first published novel, Madame Bovary (1857), and for his scrupulous devotion to his art and style.
Sentimental Education (L'Éducation sentimentale, 1869), Gustave Flaubert's last novel— is one of the most influential novels of the 19th century.
I have added our novel by Flaubert to this week's syllabus description in order to encourage you all to begin reading and to do so over several weeks. But we should all be careful in class when discussing the book so that all our classmates can have the pleasure of discovering its story on their own. Thank you.
PART THREE
PICTURES
REQUIRED READING
Week 12: "Romanticism" Tuesday Jan 10, 2012
PART ONE: LECTURE
Romanticism is the dominant philosophical vision of the modern world. The central ideas of Romanticism were first given expression in the books and essays of Jean Jacques Rousseau beginning in 1750, and it remains in the twenty-first century the single most powerful philosophical vision in Western Civilization. For our winter quarter, a complete understanding of Romanticism is the proper and necessary foundation for all the remaining study during this quarter. I have chosen these three individuals to speak for Romaticism in their three different fields:
Delacroix the painter, Rousseau the philosopher, Byron the poet.
DELACROIX
Eugène Delacroix (26 April 1798 – 13 August 1863) was a French Romantic artist regarded from the outset of his career as the leader of the French Romantic school. Delacroix's use of expressive brushstrokes and his study of the optical effects of colour profoundly shaped the work of the Impressionists, while his passion for the exotic inspired the artists of the Symbolist movement. A fine lithographer, Delacroix illustrated various works of William Shakespeare, the Scottish writer Sir Walter Scott and the German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
ROUSSEAU
If you have never had the opportunity to study the prophet of Romanticism, this may be the time that you want to learn something more about him. The three-volume Cranston biography is the best in print.
RECOMMENDED READING:
The best biography of Rousseau is written by an Englishman, (Can you imagine how the Frence hate that!) Maurice Cranston who devoted a lifetime to Rousseau and produced a brilliant biography at the end of his life. It is available in 3 softcover volumes. It is very readable, very well written. For our work the first volume is the most immediately useful but all three are worth reading at some point in your investigations into Romanticism.
Vol. 1: Jean-Jacques; the early Life and Work (1712-1754)
Vol. 2: The Noble Savage (1754-1762)
Vol. 3: The Solitary Self (1762-1778)
University of Chicago Press.MATERIAL ON THE WEB:
BYRON
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, later George Gordon Noel, 6th Baron Byron, FRS (22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824), commonly known simply as Lord Byron, was an English poet and a leading figure in Romanticism. Amongst Byron's best-known works are the brief poems "She Walks in Beauty," "When We Two Parted," and "So, we'll go no more a roving," in addition to the narrative poems "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" and "Don Juan." He is regarded as one of the greatest British poets and remains widely read and influential. Byron's notability rests not only on his writings but also on his life, which featured aristocratic excesses, huge debts, numerous love affairs, and self-imposed exile. He was famously described by Lady Caroline Lamb as "mad, bad and dangerous to know". He travelled to fight against the Ottoman Empire in the Greek War of Independence, for which Greeks revere him as a national hero. He died from a fever contracted while in Messolonghi in Greece.
MATERIAL ON THE WEB:
PART TWO: Painting
Eugene Delacroix
Week 13: "The New Realism in Painting" Tuesday Jan 17, 2012
PART ONE LECTURE:
France, 1830-1850King Louis Philippe I, (1773-1850), King of France, 1830-1848
Francois Guizot, (1787-1874) Minister of Education, Foreign Minister, and Prime Minister
Gustave Courbet, "The Studio" (1855).
From Wikipedia: "The Artist's Studio (L'Atelier du peintre): A Real Allegory of a Seven Year Phase in my Artistic and Moral Life" is an 1855 oil painting on canvas by Gustave Courbet. It is located in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, France. Begun in late 1854, he completed it in six weeks. "The world comes to be painted at my studio" said Courbet. The figures in the painting are allegorical representations of various influences on Courbet's artistic life. On the left are human figures from all levels of society. In the center, Courbet works on a landscape, while turned away from a nude model who is a symbol of academic art tradition. On the right are friends and associates of Courbet including writers George Sand and Charles Baudelaire, Champfleury, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, and collector Alfred Bruyas. The 1855 Paris World Fair's jury accepted eleven of Courbet's work, but refused this one. So, in an act of self promotion Courbet, with the help of Jacques-Louis-Alfred Bruyas, opened his own exhibition close to the official exposition; this was a forerunner of the various Salon des Refusés. Very little praise was forthcoming, and Eugène Delacroix was one of the few painters who supported the work. Influenced by Diego Velázquez's "Las Meninas," this work in turn influenced Edouard Manet in two of his early paintings: "The Old Musician" and "La Musique aux Tuileries."
I have added our novel by Flaubert to this week's syllabus description in order to encourage you all to begin reading and to do so over several weeks. But we should all be careful in class when discussing the book so that all our classmates can have the pleasure of discovering its story on their own. Thank you.
REQUIRED READING
PART TWO: PICTURES
The work of Gustave Courbet.
Week 14: "Realism in literature" Tuesday Jan 24, 2012
PART ONE: LECTURE
Gustave Flaubert (December 12, 1821 – May 8, 1880) was a French writer who is counted among the greatest Western novelists. He is known especially for his first published novel, Madame Bovary (1857), and for his scrupulous devotion to his art and style.
Sentimental Education (L'Éducation sentimentale, 1869), Gustave Flaubert's last novel—one of the most influential novels of the 19th century.
REQUIRED READING
This review is from: Sentimental Education (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)
There is a special value in "Sentimental Education" that puts it among the highest class of novels. Better than Thackery, better than Stendhal, better than Austen, better than Balzac, better than Eliot, it offers something that Dickens or Melville, for all their virtues, do not provide. Here is a portrayal of a society, where the author looks deeply and thoroughly--and does not flinch. The contrast with Thackeray, whose sarcasms and coldness cannot hide a fundamentally conventional mind, is obvious. But there is also none of the self-satisfied amusement that we see in Austen, or the something for everyone that we see in Trollope, or the sentimentality in Dickens, or the way the captain goes on and on in "Billy Budd" saying he has no choice but to execute the fundamentally innocent Billy, or the fundamentally abstract obsession with unity that we see in Eliot. Here we see a story of a venial, petty monarchy, the hopes and illusions of the second republic, and its suppression and replacement by a new Napoleonic regime. For Hemingway and Fitzgerald and Joyce and other masters of the modern novel Sentimental Education is the perfect novel.PART TWO: PICTURES
A visit to Rouen, the hometown of Flaubert, and a visit to his house where he was born and to the country house on the banks of the Seine where he wrote.
Week 15: "The Revolution of 1848" Tuesday Jan 31, 2012
PART ONE: LECTURE
"The Revolution of 1848"<From Wikipedia:
The 1848 Revolution in France was one of a wave of revolutions in 1848 in Europe. In France, the February revolution ended the Orleans monarchy (1830-1848) and led to the creation of the French Second Republic. The February revolution established the principle of the "right to work" (droit au travail), and its newly-established government created "National Workshops" for the unemployed. At the same time a sort of industrial parliament was established at the Luxembourg Palace, under the presidency of the Socialist Louis Blanc, with the object of preparing a scheme for the organization of labour. These tensions between liberal Orleanist and Radical Republicans and Socialists led to the June Days Uprising. The June days were a bloody but unsuccessful rebellion by the Paris workers against a conservative turn in the Republic's course. On December 2, 1848, Louis Napoleon was elected President of the Second Republic in the first truly national presidential election in French history.REQUIRED READING
RECOMMENDED READING
PART TWO: PICTURES
"Realism" and the work of Honore Daumier.
Week 16: "Louis Napoleon Bonaparte: Part One" Tuesday Feb 7, 2012
PART ONE: LECTURE
Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte ( born April 20,1808 – died January 9, 1873) was the President of the French Second Republic and as Napoleon III, the ruler of the Second French Empire. He was the nephew and heir of Napoleon I, christened as Charles Louis Napoléon Bonaparte. Elected President by popular vote in 1848, he initiated a coup d'état in 1851, before ascending the throne as Napoleon III on 2 December 1852, the forty-eighth anniversary of Napoleon I's coronation. He ruled as Emperor of the French until 4 September 1870. He holds the unusual distinction of being both the first titular president and the last monarch of France.In this our first of two weeks on Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, we will talk about his early life as the nephew of Napoleon, and the son of Hortense de Beauharnais, and grandson of Josephine: his life in the palace; his life on the run after 1815; his life in Italy; his life in prison; his return to power in 1848.
PART TWO: PICTURES
Louis Napoleon (Napoleon III) amd his family.
Week 17: "Louis Napoleon Bonaparte: Part Two" Tuesday Feb 14, 2012
PART ONE: LECTURE
Louis Napoleon Bonaparte ruled France for twenty-two years. He was elected President in a landslide victory in the national elections of 1848. At the end of his presidential term, he requested the legislature to change the law allowing only one presidential term. The legislature refused and so in December, 1851, as his term was about to end, he staged a midnight coup ("Operation Rubicon") and took over the government. He remained in power until 1870. On this second evening, we will discuss Louis Napoleon Bonaparte ("Napoleon III") as ruler of France from 1848 to 1870.REQUIRED READING
PART TWO: Painting
An introduction to the work of Édouard Manet (1832-1883)
Week 18: "Edouard Manet (1832-1883)" Tuesday Feb 21, 2012
PART ONE: LECTURE
Edouard Manet (1832-1883)
1832 born in Paris (most 19th Century French writers/artists from country).
1841 American, John Rand, invents oil paint in tubes.
1842 studying at College Rollin (Manet has good education)
1848 goes to sea, father wants him to join Navy.
1849 rejected by Navy.
meets Suzanne Leenhoff, future wife.
1850 Manet begins painting career in studio of Thomas Couture (Decadence of Romans). 1851 birth of Leon-Edouard Leenhoff. (was he Leon Manet's son?)
1852 visits Amsterdam, influence of Dutch artists.
1853 visits Dresden, Prague, Vienna, Italy.
1855 visits Delacroix. is a great admirer of Delacroix.
1856 on his own, leaves Couture rents own studio.
1859 first painting submitted to Salon: rejected. "The Absinthe Drinker."
1861 first painting accepted by Salon: "The Spanish Singer."
1862 father dies, leaves him substantial fortune.
1863 exhibits "Music in the Tuileries" in a gallery.
exhibits "Le dejeuner sur l'herbe" at Salon des Refuses.
marries Suzanne Leenhoff..
1865 Salon accepts "Olympia," huge scandal. (how did it get accepted?).
first visit to Spain. impressed by Velazquez and Goya. 1866 paintings rejected by Salon again. Zola writes impassioned defense.
meets Zola, Cezanne, Monet, now Manet becomes central figure in French art.
1867 World's Fair in Paris: Manet erects own pavilion (like Courbet).
Zola publishes 23-page defense of Manet's work in L'Artiste, Revue du XIX Siecle.
1870 Franco- Prussian War, fall of the government.
Manet joins the National Guard. sends family to country.
1871 Manet witnesses the Paris Commune. paints scenes.
his lithography one of most haunting memories of Commune.
1872 dealer Paul Durand-Ruel buys 24 canvases. first recognition.
1874 Salon accepts his painting: "The Railroad."
brother Eugene marries the woman painter Berthe Morisot.
First Impressionist Exhibition within which he does not exhibit,
but within which his sister-in-law Berthe Morisot has the greatest success of them all.
1875 "Argenteuil" exhibited at Salon.
travels to Venice. paints "The Grand Canal," loves Venice.
1876 holds exhibition in own studio. shows paintings rejected by Salon.
1877 Salon rejects "Nana," shows in gallery window, cause sensation, fury (prostitute).
1878 evicted from his studio due to his private exhibition (really they just dont want him). 1880 early symptoms of syphilis which now worsens every month til death in 1883.
1882 great difficulty walking. legs giving out. paints anyway.
in pain, he paints his greatest painting: "The Bar at the Folies-Bergere"
1883 April his legs worsening, amputate left leg April 20.
surgery unsuccessful, last days in terrible pain.
April 30, 1883. buried in Passy.
1884 posthumous exhibition of his works at the bastion of Classicism:
Ecole des Beaux-Arts.REQUIRED READING
Week 19: "Emile Zola" Tuesday Feb 28, 2012
PART ONE: LECTURE: Emile Zola,
EMILE ZOLA AND INTELLECTUALSZola was the most noteworthy example of the new 19th Century type called "Intellectual," that is, a person of learning who engages in the social and political movements of his age and contributes with his mind and his pen to the controversies of his time. The most dramatic example in the nineteenth century of intellectuals organizing for the advancement of the rights of citizens is the Dreyfus case. Zola and his friends organized and used the press to intervene in order to reverse a shocking miscarriage of justice. Tonight we will discuss the new social role: the intellectual.
Wikipedia: Émile François Zola (2 April 1840 – 29 September 1902) was a French writer, the most important exemplar of the literary school of naturalism and an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism. He was a major figure in the political liberalization of France and in the exoneration of the falsely accused and convicted army officer Alfred Dreyfus, which is encapsulated in the renowned newspaper headline J'Accuse. Zola was born in Paris in 1840. His father, François Zola (originally Francesco Zolla), was an Italian engineer. With his French wife, Émilie Aurélie Aubert, the family moved to Aix-en-Provence, in the southeast, when he was three years old. Four years later, in 1847, his father died, leaving his mother on a meager pension. In 1858, the Zolas moved to Paris, where Émile's childhood friend the painter Paul Cézanne soon joined him. Zola started to write in the romantic style. His widowed mother had planned a law career for Émile, but he failed his Baccalauréat examination. Before his breakthrough as a writer, Zola worked as a clerk in a shipping firm, and then in the sales department for a publisher (Hachette). He also wrote literary and art reviews for newspapers. As a political journalist, Zola did not hide his dislike of Napoleon III, who had successfully run for the office of President under the constitution of the French Second Republic, only to misuse this position as a springboard for the coup d'état that made him emperor.
REQUIRED READING
The Masterpiece (1886) is Zola's novel about an artist contending with the rejections suffered at the hands of the official art world. It is the tragic story of Claude Lantier, an ambitious and talented young artist who has come from the provinces to conquer Paris but is conquered instead by the flaws of his own genius. Set in the 1860s and 1870s, it is the most autobiographical of the twenty novels in Zola's Rougon-Macquart series. It provides a unique insight into Zola's career as a writer and his relationship with Cezanne, a friend since their schooldays in Aix-en-Provence. It also presents a well-documented account of the turbulent Bohemian world in which the Impressionists came to prominence despite the conservatism of the Academy and the ridicule of the general public.
Week 20: "Looking Back: From Revolution to War" Tuesday Mar 6, 2012
PART ONE: LECTURE
In our last week we will review the nature of French culture and politics from the French Revolution to the end of the 19th Century: Robespierre, Napoleon, Louis XVIII, Louis-Philippe, Napoleon III. Did France grow in these years? Did France progress politically? Did the French people learn about democracy and become more sophisticated and ready to control their own government? These were the questions that French thinkers such as De Tocqueville considered.Looking Back at the Novelists:
Stendhal (1783-1842)
Balzac (1799 - 1850)
Gustave Flaubert (1821 - 1883)
Emile Zola ( 1840 - 1902)
PART TWO: PICTURES
The last years of Eduoard Manet (1832-1883)
"At the Bar of the Folies Bergere," 1882, Courtauld Institute, London
Spring Vacation - March 12 to March 23, 2012
Vacation.
No class the week of March 13 and March 20.
First class of Spring Quarter is March 27, 2012.
