Simon Gaunt and Nicholas Harrison
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9781846316555
- eISBN:
- 9781846316692
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/UPO9781846316692.011
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
This chapter examines the link between French language learning and French literature studies. In practice, pre-modern studies in university French programmes are, to a significant extent, literary ...
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This chapter examines the link between French language learning and French literature studies. In practice, pre-modern studies in university French programmes are, to a significant extent, literary studies; and such pressures as exist to move away from pre-modern areas are closely linked to wider pressures to move away from literature of any era. The chapter focuses on these multiple and sometime murky sources of pressure. It concludes that ideally, a university programme in French will facilitate a productive dialectic between language learning and the objects that it makes accessible and that support it — objects whose riches deepen as one's knowledge of the language deepens, and which deepen that knowledge.Less
This chapter examines the link between French language learning and French literature studies. In practice, pre-modern studies in university French programmes are, to a significant extent, literary studies; and such pressures as exist to move away from pre-modern areas are closely linked to wider pressures to move away from literature of any era. The chapter focuses on these multiple and sometime murky sources of pressure. It concludes that ideally, a university programme in French will facilitate a productive dialectic between language learning and the objects that it makes accessible and that support it — objects whose riches deepen as one's knowledge of the language deepens, and which deepen that knowledge.
