Approaches to Teaching Duras's Ourika - Couverture souple

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 1603290192 ISBN 13 : 9781603290197

Editeur : Modern Language Association of America, 2009

Synopsis

When it was first published, in 1823, Claire de Duras's novel Ourika became a best seller almost immediately, and in recent decades, instructors have found it an irresistible addition to their syllabi. But from a teacher's perspective the novel presents something of a paradox. It is short, its narrative structure is uncomplicated, its vocabulary is limited, its plot is straightforward. It thus lends itself to "simple" readings that fail to reveal the novel's rich fund of social and historical themes. Set against the backdrop of the French and Haitian revolutions, the Terror, and the restoration and featuring the first black woman narrator in French literature, Ourika raises issues of identity, inequality, exclusion, power, and race and gender relations. The goal of this Approaches volume is to help teachers bring out the novel's profound and complex underpinnings and reveal Ourika, its Senegalese protagonist, as a victim of history and a timeless tragic heroine.

Part 1 provides an overview of editions of the novel and secondary resources, including critical, historical, and biographical studies. Also featured is a useful time line situating Duras's life in its historical framework. Part 2 offers a wealth of pedagogical approaches, grouped in four sections, which focus on the historical context of the novel; on race, gender, and class issues; on teaching Ourika with other works of literature; and on interdisciplinary perspectives.

Throughout the volume, the editions of Ourika referred to are the MLA Texts and Translations paperback editions, in French and in English translation, published in 1994.

A propos du livre

À propos des auteurs

Mary Ellen Birkett is professor of French studies at Smith College. Her publications touch on Desbordes-Valmore, Fontenelle, Hugo, Lamartine, Nodier, Rousseau, Sainte-Beuve, Sand, Senancour, Stendhal, and Vigny. She is coeditor of Religious Tolerance and Intolerance in Ancient and Modern Worlds and author of Lamartine and the Poetics of Landscape.

Christopher Rivers is professor of French at Mount Holyoke College. He is the editor and translator of My Life and Battles, a memoir by Jack Johnson, and Mademoiselle Giraud, ma femme and the author of Face Value: Physiognomical Thought and the Legible Body in Marivaux, Lavater, Balzac, Gautier, and Zola.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Modern Language Association of America
• Date d'édition: 2009
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 1603290192
• ISBN 13: 9781603290197
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 191
• Éditeur: Birkett Mary Ellen
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: Mare Nostrum Group B.V.; gpsr@mare-nostrum.co.uk; ; Doelen 72; Breda; 4831 GR; Pays-Bas