FREN 1308 · Four Centuries of the French Sentence

Led by Claude Favre de Vaugelas Simulacrum

1. Module 8 ○ Open

   Four Centuries of the French Sentence

   Led by Claude Favre de Vaugelas Simulacrum

   The question

   The seven set texts of this strand span 1580 to 1956 — Montaigne Simulacrum, Molière Simulacrum, Voltaire Simulacrum, Flaubert Simulacrum, Colette Simulacrum, Camus Simulacrum, Senghor Simulacrum — and across the four centuries you can read the French sentence change in the writers' hands. The free-running essayistic syntax of Montaigne Simulacrum; the *alexandrin* couplet of Molière Simulacrum; the brisk ironic prose of Voltaire Simulacrum; the laboured *mot juste* prose of Flaubert Simulacrum; the sensuous descriptive selection of Colette Simulacrum; the declarative ethical witness of Camus Simulacrum; the long Négritude line of Senghor Simulacrum. Each writer made a different French. The integration module steps back and asks: what does the literary history of the French sentence tell us about French itself, and what does the contemporary writer inherit from the seven of them?

   Outcome

   The student has read all seven set texts, can place each writer in the four-century sequence, can identify the specific sentence-level legacy each gives the contemporary writer, and can produce a 700-word integrative essay in French on the strand as a whole.

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   Practice scenarios

   The Integrative Essay

   Vaugelas Simulacrum asks you to write a 700-word integrative essay in French on the strand as a whole — not a summary of the seven works (you have already read them) but an argued response to the question: *what does the seven-writer sequence show you about the French sentence, and what one writer in the sequence has changed how you read or how you might write?* The essay should engage at least four of the seven writers in specific terms, identifying one sentence-level move from each that you can name and quote. The closing should commit — name the one writer whose work has changed your sense of French most, and explain.

   Your goals

   • 700 words ± 100 in *register soutenu*.
   • Engage at least four of the seven writers in specific quotable terms.
   • One sentence-level move per engaged writer, named and analysed.
   • A closing commitment — *one* writer named, explained, defended.
   • Prose that integrates the apparatus of the Language strand (grammar, register, cohesive devices) and the genre awareness of the Forms strand (this is a critical-reflective essay, written to the conventions of that form).

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