Mar 29, 2024  
2018-2019 Academic Catalogue 
    
2018-2019 Academic Catalogue [ARCHIVED CATALOGUE]

FRE 366 - Advanced Topics: Where Women Wielded Power: Salong Culture in France (in English) (1)

From the 16th century through the 20th, French women hosted intellectual and literary salons, providing a carefully cultivated venue for conversation among great writers, thinkers, artists, and musicians, such as Voltaire, Chopin, Proust, and Picasso. In addition to wielding power by building networks and shaping cultural trends, many of the hostesses were themselves accomplished theorists and authors and took advantage of the salon as a space for their own expression. Women involved with salon culture wrote in multiple genres and about many topics; similarly, there are plays, novels, artwork, and nonfiction about women and salons-some portraying them in a flattering light and some belittling their efforts. Although some contemporaries viewed salons positively as a venue of higher education for women and a place to foster women’s gifts, others saw salons as gatherings of women who led empty and idle lives while ignoring their familial duties, and whose domination in intellectual circles merely muddled men’s search for knowledge and truth. In this course, we will examine historical salons and read literary works not only about salons but also by salonnières themselves. We will concentrate on material exploring women’s social roles both in the salon and in the larger society, and thus on questions of “female virtue” and “feminine ideals.” This course is taught in English and counts for the GSS major. Wrting Requirement (W)
(Humanities)