HS 316 - Seeking Definition: Modern France, 1815-1945

(3.00 cr.)

Prerequisite: One HS 100-level course. Charts France's search for identity, from the defeat of Napoleon to liberation from Nazi occupation in 1945. A variety of novels and plays are used to examine the tension between the dynamic republican passion of revolutionary France and the more static Catholic conservative alternative. Using films and other sources, the course ends with an analysis of the construction and deconstruction of the legend of the French Resistance.