Assignment 2: 2500-word creative exercise and reflective commentary (60%) due 23:55 on Sunday 9 January 2022

Assignment 2: 2500-word creative exercise and reflective commentary (60%)

Guidelines

• There is no fixed proportion for the lengths of the creative exercise and reflective commentary; neither component, however, should be less than 1000 words. If you were to write a creative piece of 1200 words, for example, you would have 1300 words remaining for the reflective commentary.
• FRE6006 students should write their creative exercise in French, but their reflective commentary in English.
• Your creative piece should not be inspired by the same text you discussed in your first assignment.
  
• You should approach (and present) the reflective commentary as you would a normal piece of academic writing. The reflective commentary provides you with a space for discussing key narrative features of the primary texts and the ways in which you have responded to these in your creative writing. You might analyse, for example, how focalization is used in the literary work before discussing how you adopted or subverted this narrative approach in your own work.
• Your reflective commentary should demonstrate an awareness of relevant secondary literature. It should be accompanied, therefore, by a bibliography detailing the critical works you have used. The bibliography is not included in the word count.

Complete one of the following tasks:

1. Imagine you are a jongleur competing with Turoldus to offer the most evocative and engaging account of Roland’s exploits. Compose your own version of the events covered by laisses 79–92 of La Chanson de Roland (The Song of Roland). In this scene, the Saracen forces appear and Oliver and Roland debate as to whether or not Roland should blow his oliphant. You should present your piece as verse, but are free to experiment with rhyme, metre and other aspects of versification as you wish. As a guide, you should plan to compose roughly ten to fifteen laisses, depending on their length. Accompany your text with a reflective commentary.

Suggested secondary reading (non-exhaustive):

·         Brault, Gerard Joseph (1978) The Song of Roland: An Analytical Edition. 1. Introduction and Commentary. University Park, London: Pennsylvania State University Press.

·         Cook, Robert Francis (1987) The Sense of the Song of Roland. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

·         Gaunt, Simon and Sarah Kay (eds.) (2008) The Cambridge Companion to Medieval French Literature. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. (Includes a useful introductory chapter on the poem)

·         Taylor, Andrew (2001) Was There a Song of Roland? Speculum 76 (1): 28–65.

·         Vance, Eugene (1970) Reading the Song of Roland. Englewood Cliffs, N.J: Prentice-Hall.

2. Shortly after the publication of La Princesse de Clèves in 1678, a contemporary literary magazine, the Mercure Galant, asked its readers whether they thought the princess was right to confess her true desires to her husband. The scene has been a focus of attention for readers and critics ever since. For this creative task, you will write an interior monologue describing the thoughts of the Princesse de Clèves in the moment of silence preceding her confession to her husband. This moment occurs on p. 181 in the prescribed French edition and p. 94 in the prescribed English edition. This interior monologue could be considered an extension of the one immediately preceding the scene of the avowal, in which the Princesse de Clèves debates with herself as to whether or not she wants to enter into a love affair. Accompany your text with a reflective commentary.

Suggested secondary reading (non-exhaustive):

·         DeJean, Joan E. (1991) Tender Geographies: Women and the Origins of the Novel in France. New York: Columbia University Press.

·         Francillon, Roger (1973) L’Œuvre romanesque de Madame de Lafayette. Paris: Corti.

·         Henry, Patrick (1992) An Inimitable Example: The Case for the Princesse de Clèves. Washington D.C: Catholic University of America Press.

·         Judovitz, Dalia (1984) The Aesthetics of Implausibility: La Princesse de Cleves. Modern Language Notes 99 (5) 1037–1056.

·         Kuizenga, Donna (1976) Narrative Strategies in La Princesse de Clèves. Lexington: French Forum Monographs. (This is particularly useful on speech and thought representation)

3. Based on your reading of Flaubert’s Trois contes (Three Tales), complete one of the following tasks:

a) Rewrite one or more scenes from ‘Un cœur simple’ (‘A Simple Heart’) in order to explore the views, feelings and perceptions of Mme Aubain. Options for scenes to rewrite include the group’s encounter with the bull; the episode in which Félicité becomes acquainted with her nephew Victor and the announcement of his death; Virginie’s illness and death; the arrival of the parrot and Mme Aubain’s perspective on Félicité’s relationship with it. Accompany your piece with a reflective commentary.

b) Write a creative piece in which Julian reflects on his childhood after having fled from his parents and enlisted in a band of mercenaries at the end of the first chapter of the story. Accompany your piece with a reflective commentary.

c) Rewrite the culminating dance scene in ‘Hérodias’ (‘Herodias’) to explore Salomé’s views, feelings and perceptions. Accompany your piece with a reflective commentary.  

Suggested secondary reading (non-exhaustive):

·         Debray-Genette, Raymonde, Gérard Genette and Tzvetan Todorov (1983) Travail de Flaubert Paris: Éditions de Seuil. (especially the essay by Debray-Genette entitled ‘Du mode narratif dans les Trois Contes’)

·         Debray-Genette, Raymonde (1988) Métamorphose du récit. Autour de Flaubert. Paris : Éditions du Seuil.

·         Pilkington, A. E (1975) Point of View in Flaubert’s La Légende de saint Julien l’Hospitalier. French Studies 29 (3) 266–79.

·         Raitt, A. W. (1992) Flaubert: Trois Contes (Critical Guides to French Texts) London: Grant and Cutler. (This is an extremely useful guide with a wealth of comments on narrative technique; also contains a useful bibliography for each work)

·         Schor, Naomi and Henry F. Majewski (eds.) Flaubert and Postmodernism. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

·         Unwin, Timothy (ed.) (2004) The Cambridge Companion to Flaubert. New York: Cambridge University Press. (no essays focused on the Trois contes per se but useful contextual material and essays on characterization and stylistics)

This assignment is due 23:55 on Sunday 9 January 2022. Please use the SLLF coversheet (available from the QMplus module page), and take note of the guidelines on it. Your final version of the assignment should be uploaded to QMplus as either a Word document or a PDF file. Do not use other file formats. Feedback will be provided within four weeks of submission.

All coursework for this assignment will be submitted via Turnitin. If you wish to see a Turnitin report on your assignment before submitting the final version you will be able to do so. However, you must ensure that you submit your draft version well in advance, allowing at least 24 hours before the deadline to receive and review your report, and amend and upload your final version of the coursework by the deadline. If you plan to review your work more than once, you must plan your initial submission to allow at least 24 hours between reports.