116-032 Puzzles and Mazes: Experimental Writing

Note

Credit Points

HECS Band

Coordinator

Prerequisites

116-007 French I: Cultural Perspectives and 116-008 French I: Language in Context II or equivalent. European studies students wishing to enrol in this subject would normally have completed first year European studies, see Prerequisites.

Semester

Contact

Subject Description

In this subject students will read a series of experimental literary texts in French, discovering the patterns and irregularities in their structure. An understanding of how these texts are put together will be applied in a series of writing exercises employing constraints similar to those discovered in the reading. Students also explore the poetic function of language through the systematic study of word play and come to appreciate the literary potential of spoken French. On completing the subject students should have an understanding of the historical relations between the prescribed texts and a sense of experimental possibilities as yet unexplored.

Assessment

A class paper on a specific text totalling 1000 words in French, a folio of writing exercises in French totalling 1600 words, and a comparative essay in French totalling 1400 words.

Prescribed Texts

A subject reader will be available.

• R Queneau, Le Chiendent. Folio, 1990.
• Oulipo, Atlas de Littérature potentielle. Folio, 1990.