French Literature and Other Literatures

The course deals with the interactions between French literature and other European literatures in the period from the late 17th to early 20th century. The presentation is divided into several thematic sections: the period of French cultural dominance in Europe (example: Voltaire and Frederick the Great) English influence on French Enlightenment and preromantic literature (Shakespeare and Voltaire, Diderot and Sterne, Richardson, Fielding and Prévost; the black novel and its echoes in France); Rousseau as one of the founders of European Romanticism, Mme de Staël as an intermediary between the French and German literature, French romanticism and Shakespeare; examples of byronism in French literature; ETA Hoffman in France; Turgenev and French realists, Tolstoy and Stendhal, Baudelaire and Poe, Wagner as a literary model, Mallarmé and English literature; Ruskin and Proust, Gide and Dostoevsky. The presentation of the chosen topics is based on literary texts.