Approaches to Teaching Lafayette's The Princess of Clèves
Editor(s): Faith E. Beasley, Katharine Ann Jensen
Pages: xi & 211 pp.
Published: 1998
ISBN: 9780873527460 (paperback)
ISBN: 9780873527453 (hardcover)
Frequently identified in French literary histories as the first modern novel--that is, the first to focus on its characters' thoughts and feelings instead of their heroic actions--Lafayette's La Princesse de Clèves has provoked discussion and strong opinions since it was published in 1678. Today instructors use this increasingly popular novel not only in French literature courses but also in comparative literature courses, women's studies courses, and theme-oriented courses; but its unfamiliar historical setting can be daunting to contemporary classes. In the words of the editors, this collection aims to "give colleagues...a sense of seventeenth-century France and show how the novel is a product of this milieu, for these are the keys to making the novel comprehensible and indeed enjoyable to students."
Table of Contents
Approaches to Teaching Lafayette's The Princess of Clèves
PART 1: MATERIALS
Faith E. Beasley and Katharine Ann Jensen
- French Editions
- English Translations
- The Instructor's Library
- Background Studies
- Critical Studies
Aids to Teaching
PART 2: APPROACHES
Introduction
Mirroring Society: La Princesse de Clèves in Context
Lafayette's First Readers: The Quarrel of La Princesse de Clèves
Elizabeth C. Goldsmith
Religious Themes in La Princesse de Clèves
Louis A. MacKenzie
Court Society and Economies of Exchange
Harriet Stone
Virtue and Civility in La Princesse de Clèves
Marie-Paule Laden
Masculinity in La Princesse de Clèves
Lewis C. Seifert
Making Sense of the Ending: Passion, Virtue, and Female Subjectivity
Katharine Ann Jensen
Themes and Structures
The Mother-Daughter Subtext in La Princesse de Clèves
Michéle Longino
Conflicting Emotions: Personal and Cultural Vraisemblance in La Princesse de Clèves
Inge Crosman Wimmers
Getting Inside: Digression, Entanglement, and the Internal Narratives
Rae Beth Gordon
Mapping La Princesse de Clèves: A Spatial Approach
Éva Pósfay
Seeing and Being Seen: Visual Codes and Metaphors in La Princesse de Clèves
Julia Douthwaite
Truly Inimitable? Repetition in La Princesse de Clèves
Louise K. Horowitz
Specific Teaching Contexts
Teaching La Princesse de Clèves in Translation
Faith E. Beasley
What's Love Got to Do with It? The Issue of Vulnerability in an Anthological Approach
James F. Gaines
Romance and Novel in La Princesse de Clèves
Kathleen Wine
Reading La Princesse de Clèves with the Heptaméron
John D. Lyons
Mediation of Desire in La Princesse de Clèves
Anne Callahan
Teaching La Princesse de Clèves in a Women's Studies Course
Elizabeth J. MacArthur
Appendixes
1. The Quarrel over La Princesse de Clèves: Passages from Valincour, Lettres, and Charnes, Conversations
2. Undergraduate Study Guide
Genealogy, La Princesse de Clèves
Works Cited
Index
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