Written Assignment Titles 2001-2

You are required to submit a 3,500-word essay in English to your course tutor (Tony McNeill) no later than Thursday 10th January 2002. All written assignments must be accompanied by an HSS cover sheet available from the Language Centre (Forster room 6) or from your module tutor.

 
1) «Le monde était, en `14 beaucoup plus simpliste, plus nature, plus sincère, beaucoup moins ficelle, moins vicieux qu'aujourd'hui» (J-F. Céline). What do you understand by this claim and how relevant is it to an understanding of French society and culture after la Grande Guerre?

2) «Le paradoxe des années 30 est que l'explosion xenophobe coïncide avec les signes d'une intégration  dans la société française de la population étrangère» (D. Borne & H. Dubief). How far would you agree  with this assessment of the integration of immigrants into French society in the 1930s?

3) «Usée, exsangue, sans dynamisme, la France se replie frileusement sur lui-même, considérant avec suspicion tout ce qui provient de l'étranger» (S. Bernstein). How far is this a reasonable explanation of  the xenophobia of the interwar years in France?

4) Gérard Noiriel has argued that anti-Semitism in France can only be understood in the broader context  of the xenophobia of French society in the 1930s. How far would you concur?

5) Critically evaluate the impact of economic recession on French political life in the 1930s.

6) «Y eut-il un fascisme français» (D. Borne & H. Dubief)? To what extent, if at all, can one describe the resurgent French Far Right of the 1930s as fascist?

7) «Perhaps the Front's greatest achievement was to have come into being at all»  (M. Larkin). What do you understand by this claim and how far is it justified?

8) «Spain fatally divided the Popular Front» (P. Brendon). How far would you concur?

9) In what sense could Vichy be seen as the anti-dreyfusards' revenge?

10) «Modernism signals the writers' and artists' heightened sensation of the new and constantly changing social and aesthetic visions of their societies» (C. Russell). Discuss the validity of this claim with reference to modernist art and literature.

11) «Les chefs-d'oeuvres du passé sont pour le passé: ils ne sont pas bons pour nous» (A. Artaud). Discuss with detailed reference to avant-garde art and literature.

12) «J'ai la volonté d'être un poète nouveau, et autant dans la forme que dans le fond» (G. Apollinaire). How far is this ambition realized in Calligrammes?

13) Céline's Voyage au bout de la nuit has been described as a «bitter satire of war, colonialism, the economic dreams of the New World, and the decaying values of French society» (C. Nettlebeck). How far would you concur with this view?

14) «Le cinéma, cet art essentiellement populaire, est fabriqué et dirigé par des gens qui s'éloignent de plus en plus du peuple. Le fossé qui se creuse entre le Paris des beaux quartiers et le Paris qui travaille devient de plus en plus profond. Bientôt il devient infranchissable et la capitale de la France sera divisée en deux villes ennemis. Le cinéma français doit être restitué au peuple français. Il doit être repris des mains des profiteurs des films, des dealers de films sans valeur, des stars synthétiques» (J. Renoir). What light does this shed on the cinema of the Popular Front period?
 

For last year's coursework assessment titles, click here.