In this Easter vacation, many students are deciding how to refine their scheme of revision for the exams next term and which texts to focus on. The FR1 Exhibition held in the University Library on 17 March for first year students of French offered the perfect opportunity to refresh our memories of texts covered last term; to unlock caches of insight into the worlds in which the authors, playwrights and directors were working; and to situate the different texts in their respective historical and cultural contexts. It was organised in collaboration between library and academic staff from the UL Collections and Academic Liaison department and the Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics faculty, with the support of UL Special collections. Seeing each text as part of a greater body of work by their creators allows them to really come to life, and encourages the students to inhabit the mind of the writer and equally that of a contemporaneous reader, viewer or audience member.
The most pertinent example, perhaps, was the copy of Michel de Montaigne’s Essais that formerly belonged to Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Rather than seeing Rousseau’s writings, particularly his ‘Discours sur l’origine et les Fondements de l’inégalité parmi les hommes,’ as untouchable features of the French literary canon, his annotations on Montaigne’s work demystify his status as of the greats of the Enlightenment, which can be somewhat intimidating for those first encountering him. In reading his reactions to Montaigne’s Essais before they have been refined for a public readership, we can almost witness Rousseau’s thoughts forming, and the influence of Montaigne over him becomes all the more apparent.
Les essais de Michel, seigneur de Montaigne. A Paris : Chez Edme Cousterot, MDCLII. [1652]. CUL, Montaigne.2.2.4 (annotated by Jean-Jacques Rousseau)
Similarly, the exhibition foregrounded the physicality of the FR1 material, reminding students of the importance of keeping in mind form when analysing the texts. One item in the exhibition that stood out to me for this reason was Jordan Stump’s English translation of ‘Autoportrait en vert’ by Marie NDiaye. Unlike the previous French editions, the translation does not include the photographs scattered throughout the novel, thus producing a very different experience of reading the text. I found removing these images to be an effective method of highlighting how the nature of the Folio edition as a photo text influences and interrupts our understanding of the narrative.
The exhibition was accompanied by a PowerPoint with further online material related to the works on the programme as well as more general Francophone e-resources. The only piece missing from the vivid display was a live production of Pierre Corneille’s Horace, which I can excuse given the limitations a thirty-minute time period poses for a play of five acts. That said, a full transformation of the Milstein Room into an ancient Roman parlour would certainly have been a sight to behold!
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Dramatisations of Horace from the exhibition Powerpoint, including Horace : Corneille ; mise en scène, Jean-Pierre Miquel ; réalisation, Olivier Ricard [1973]. Paris : Editions Montparnasse, 2012.
Furthermore, the layout of the exhibition which grouped the media by time period was a useful way of helping students feel which eras they were more drawn to and those that did not spark as much excitement. Not only does this aid us in narrowing down our choices with regards to which texts to cover in the FR1 paper, but it also gives some insight into which papers students might choose to study in part IB of the Cambridge MMLL tripos. Personally, I was reluctant to part with the fascinating 13th century bestiary and its vibrant depictions of various animals and their behaviours. Naturally, I am therefore eager to have the chance to return and visit other manuscripts of this nature as part of the FR3 paper, ‘Inventing French Literature.’
Bestiary (Cambridge, University Library, MS Ii.4.26 fol. 17r)
Ultimately, the FR1 exhibition certainly made for a worthwhile trip to the University Library to empower students to take a more holistic approach to the paper, and, in my case, to indulge in an Ousmane Sembène movie marathon over the vacation.
Fianaid Neill (First year MMLL student, Newnham College)
Languages across Borders 