Gwybodaeth Modiwlau

Academic rationale:
The aim of this module is to study the various forms of travel literature from the 17th to the 19th century. The texts studied will focus on the British Isles as the experience of the "neighboring island" was essential for French culture. Students will learn to establish links between the texts studied and the cultural and literary history of contacts between France and England; and combine these with contemporary ideas about travel and its writing
The objective of the module is to provide students both with a general knowledge about this form of French-English intercultural contact, and with a wide range of critical reading and analyzing skills related to travel as a social practice and as a text.

Module aims:
Providing students with reading and analytical skills for the interpretation of travel texts; raising their awareness against anachronistic readings; study of major aspects of French-English relationship during the 17th-19th centuries. A series of introductory lectures will be followed by intensive collective work on specific texts.

This module, taught in French, will approach the various forms of writing a travel experience in 17th-19th century France, through the example of travels to the British Isles. Travel literature was among the most important forms of reading during the early modern and modern period. Most people were not in a position to travel themselves, thus their reading of travelogues was their main source of information about the world.
The module will offer first of all a theoretical knowledge of the particularities of travel as a text in various periods; its changing relationship to notions such as "truth" and "authorship"; the contemporary ideas about its value as a form of "polite entertainment" and/or a crucial source of information. Parallel to this, students will study the changing relationship between France and England through the mirror of travel, this publicized personal experience.

1-2. Introduction (2 lectures+2 seminars): the birth of early modern travelling culture; the "art of travel" and ideas on travel as a form of education (Montaigne; ideas against travel in the 17th century; Rousseau; Chateaubriand; etc.). Questions about the possibilities and difficulties of writing travels in various periods. Tools for research in travel studies. Discussion of items of secondary literature
3. The discovery of England from the 1660s. Study of excerpts from Sorbière's scandalous accounts and Le Pays' "touristic" visit.
4. (Lecture) Philosophy and travel. (Seminar) Travel and propaganda: Huguenots (Misson)
5. Anglomania, Anglophobia and travels.
6. Travelling ladies: England as a "gendered experience"
7. The Celtic experience: Faujas de Saint-Fond in Wales; Madame de Genlis and the ladies of Llangollen.
8. Travel and exile: Chateaubriand; La Tocnaye's walks.
9. Travel to England in the 19th century: a new paradigm.
10. Conclusion (lecture). The changing nature of travel and its writing. (seminar) Conclusion to the semester; questions