In F305, we will read--and perform--three plays which typify three major
movements in the history of French theater: Jean Racine's Andromaque
(1667), perhaps the loveliest of all classical tragedies, with its chain of
hopeless lovers; Molière's L'Ecole des femmes (1665), among the
greatest of French Classical comedies; and Samuel Beckett's En attendant
Godot (1953), the tragicomic quintessence of the Theater of the Absurd.
We will also write a short play in French. For the essay, we will read and
discuss a course packet covering four centuries of French essays, from
Montaigne to Roland Barthes, and examine how to catch and hold a reader's
attention in this delicate genre, trying our hand at writing essays ourselves.