Study notes for UVM French 142 in drawin' form.
These are 6 drivers of the French pre-romantic and romantic literature movements. Madame de Stael (6th pic) started it off with de l'Allemagne (and the like), and first brought the term "romantic" to France in regards to literature (she also happened to get booted from Paris by Napoleon for her writings being to liberal and feminist for the time), which basically called out France to get with the times and start being original. Then came Chateaubriand (the guy on the right in the pic below this), who was super emo and whose incest crush etc. fueled his melancholic writings. He coined the term "Mal du Siecle", which referred to romantics' disposition being of boredom, sadness, and disgust of life and beauty. Nice. Anyways, next to drive this romantic movement (because de Stael and Chateaubriand were really a part of setting up for it) were the poets of France. A big name in this regard was Alphonse de Lamartine, the guy on the left in the first pic. He wrote a lot about nature and god and being emo. After him came guys like Alfred de Vigny (who was cool cause he was very original and unlike everybody else thought of nature more like a tomb than a mother and didn't like to whine and stuff) and Victor Hugo (who was super cool all around). Following the romantic poetry, and also birthed in this time of literary circles and salon talk etc., was romantic theater. Evidently, Victor Hugo was good at everything, so his Cromwell and Hernani are still known as being some prime romantic theatre examples...but Alfred de Musset was the best! With examples like his play Fantasio, he is connected to the term "comedie humaine" and is considered the great romantic playwright of the time (third pic on the left). First semester of freshman year, I took my first philosophy class. We read Descartes and Hume, and I've got to say, while they did have many strong and impressive points about human nature, I got the feeling that if I were to meet either of them in person, that maybe I wouldn't like them, per se?
The Illustrated Man is a wonderful collection of spooky short stories, the first of which is one of Ray Bradbury's most well-known, called The Veldt. It's the one with the kids and the nursery and the lions...it's pretty radical. I'm only about halfway through, but I've noticed that Ray keeps a theme of post-apocalyptic third world war-type-stuff, so I'm wondering how much it came up in his day-to-day conversations.
In junior year of high school we had to watch an Edgar Allen Poe documentary talking about how pretty much every significant woman in his life died of tuberculosis and also how he had terrible drinking habits and died in a really mysterious and cool way (though it was probably not that cool for him given that, you know, he died).
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March 2018
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