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Subversive Texts: Baudelaire and Rachilde

Module description

This module will give you the opportunity to study the verse and prose poems of Charles Baudelaire, one of the most well-known, well-loved, and influential French poets, and a novel by Marguerite Vallette-Eymery, otherwise known as Rachilde, a less well-known but equally extraordinary writer. Both authors, he as a proto-Modernist and she as a Decadent, were considered scandalous and subversive in their time, and both saw their work censored for alleged obscenity. Both were interested in challenging comfortable narratives of what it means to be human, and both were among the most brilliant and daring thinkers of their day.

Module aims - intentions of the module

What makes a text subversive? Is it the experimental ways in which it manipulates language and generic conventions? Or is it its contestation of prevailing social and moral norms? Or does it have something to do with how it acts upon the reader—getting under her skin or up his nose, or slipping from her grasp? In the course of this module, you will work across three genres (verse, prose poetry, and the novel), asking how their particular treatment by Baudelaire and Rachilde disrupts established codes. You will learn about how the two authors under consideration caused a scandal because of their depictions of sexual desire, interpersonal relations, gender dynamics, and the darker side of human nature. You will reflect upon the author-text-reader relationship and upon the complexity of literary meaning. You will learn about the social and cultural history of France in the second half of the nineteenth century, and about the changing understanding of what it was to be human at a time of increasing social alienation and mechanisation. The relationship between aesthetics and ethics, and between empathy and cruelty, will be particular sites of interest.

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 1. Analyse how the set texts manipulate formal and generic conventions to produce particular effects.
• 2. Explain why the content of the set texts was considered subversive, with reference to prevailing moral and social beliefs, including beliefs about gender.

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 3. Analyse texts, identifying and evaluating their key features
• 4. Construct an analysis or argument in the appropriate register of English and presented in appropriate academic form, mustering a range of appropriately referenced primary and secondary textual evidence in support of key points.

ILO: Personal and key skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 5. Undertake independent learning activities with a measure of autonomy, asking for guidance from the course lecturer where necessary.
• 6. Produce written work within a specified time limit and to the required length.

Syllabus plan

Seminars will focus their discussion on particular poems, prose poems, and novel excerpts. Lectures are likely to focus on the following topics, though the exact format will vary from year to year

• What is a subversive text?
• Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal : from rich rhyme to the poetics of shock
• Baudelaire’s Le Spleen de Paris : generic hybridity and the dog’s dilemma
• Decadence : introduction to Rachilde
• Rachilde’s Monsieur Vénus : on beauty and cruelty

Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

Formative assessment

Summative assessment (% of credit)

Details of summative assessment

Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)

Re-assessment notes

Deferral – if you miss an assessment for certificated reasons judged acceptable by the Mitigation Committee, you will normally be either deferred in the assessment or an extension may be granted. The mark given for a re-assessment taken as a result of deferral will not be capped and will be treated as it would be if it were your first attempt at the assessment.

Referral – if you have failed the module overall (i.e. a final overall module mark of less than 40%) you will be required to submit a further assessment as necessary. If you are successful on referral, your overall module mark will be capped at 40%.

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

Primary reading

• Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal
• Charles Baudelaire, Le Spleen de Paris
• Rachilde, Monsieur Vénus

Indicative learning resources - Web based and electronic resources

• ELE – https://vle.exeter.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=12990

Key words search

Baudelaire, Rachilde, Les Fleurs du Mal, Le Spleen de Paris, Monsieur Vénus, poetry, versification, prose poetry, novel, gender, cruelty, aesthetics, ethics, Modernity, Modernism, Decadence