Undergraduate Course: Images of Japan in French and Francophone Culture from the 19th to the 21st century (Ordinary) (ELCF09037)
Course Outline
| School | School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 9 (Year 3 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | This option will explore the stylistic and thematic characteristics of engagement with Japan in 19th, 20th, and 21st-century French and Francophone literature (novels, diaries, poetry, travel writing) and visual culture (painting, photography, graphic novel, film). Specific tutorials will focus on a selection of the following themes and topics: impressionist painting and 19th-century Japanophilia in Western culture and literature; exoticism, orientalism, and japonism; the Japoniste "aestheticentric" poetics of modernism; the reception in France of Japanese crafts, visual arts and traditional poetry and theatre; appropriation, circulation and dissemination of literary tropes and meanings; still and moving images of postmodern Japan; tourism and the demise of the exotic; artistic and literary responses to the Fukushima nuclear disaster. |
| Course description |
Academic description
Since the (re)opening of Japan to the West in the mid-19th century, many French and Francophone writers and artists have been fascinated by this country and tended to respond to its refined art and culture in an aestheticising and exoticist manner, emphasising phenomena they considered strange and extraordinary (for instance, Pierre Loti, Edmond Goncourt, and numerous impressionist painters). This fascination has continued from post-World War II up to the present, but focus tends to have shifted towards the "infra-ordinary", towards banal and even trivial aspects of everyday life in Japan. One of the aims of this option is to explore the causes that led to this shift of focus, via a chronological survey of the French enduring fascination with Japan since the 19th century.
This course will analyse images of (and responses to) Japan in French and Francophone culture of the 19th, 20th, and 21st century, focussing especially on visual culture, Japanese aesthetics having had a major influence in this domain. A wide range of primary sources will therefore be discussed: paintings; films; photo-texts; graphic novels; literary works (novels, diaries, poetry, travel writing). A selection of the following themes and topics will be covered: Franco-Japanese intercultural relations; gender-related issues (the feminisation of Japan in Japoniste texts); the reception in France and other Francophone countries of Japanese crafts, visual arts (especially the woodblock prints known as ukiyo-e) and traditional poetry (tanka, haiku) and theatre (bunraku, noh, kabuki); the representation of ordinary objects and daily practices, and of (post)modern urban spaces (especially Tokyo); genre (travel writing). Relevant theoretical references about the history of Orientalism, (inter)cultural representations and identities, post-colonialism and post-modernism will also be introduced to allow students to engage in critical debates about the Japoniste and Neo-Japoniste works considered.
Description of the learning experience
The course is taught in eleven two-hour seminars over one semester. Students will be expected to read and watch primary sources before the class, but handouts will also be provided for each seminar with extracts from critical secondary sources and questions for discussion. Primary works will be briefly presented and contextualised by the tutor at the start of each seminar, but most of the class will be centred on workshop-based discussion.
Classes will focus on individual texts, films and images, but will also include comparative elements. Students will be expected to conduct independent research on various topics, which will then be presented in class, to lead discussions and to submit a full-length essay at the end of the option. As the course is taught via student-led learning, students are encouraged to form autonomous learning groups to discuss the primary and secondary sources before class and present the whole group with questions that were raised in their pre-class meetings.
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Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | Students must be able to read and discuss the material in French. |
| High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
| Not being delivered |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Demonstrate knowledge of a range of genre-specific productions (novels, poetry, travel-writing, paintings, films, photographs) from the end of the 19th to the beginning of the 21st century in their historical and cultural contexts
- Demonstrate a critical understanding of a range of the principal theories, concepts and terminology needed to analyse primary works
- Undertake critical analysis, evaluation and synthesis of ideas developed in primary works and some secondary sources
- Select and apply a range of relevant sources in the assessment of primary works studied
- Convey, formally and informally, information on standard topics and issues in the subject
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Reading List
Primary Sources
(Paintings)
Dossier of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings provided in class by the tutor
(Texts)
Pierre Loti, Madame Chrysanthème (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1947 [1887])
Paul Claudel, Connaissance de l'Est, suivi de L'Oiseau noir dans le soleil levant (Paris: Gallimard, 1929)
Jean-Philippe Toussaint, Autoportraits (à l'étranger) (Paris: Minuit, 2000)
Michaël Ferrier, Fukushima. Récit d'un désastre (Paris: Gallimard, 2012)
(Photo-texts)
Roland Barthes, L'Empire des signes (Genève: Skira, 1970)
Chris Marker, Le Dépays (Paris: Herscher, 1982)
(Graphic novel)
Frédéric Boilet and Benoît Peeters, Tokyo est mon jardin (Tournai: Casterman, 1997)
(Films)
Alain Corneau, Stupeur et tremblements (2003)
Chris Marker, Sans Soleil (1983)
Essential Secondary Reading
Ferrier, Michaël, Japon: la barrière des rencontres (Nantes: Cécile Defaut, 2009)
Forest, Philippe, La Beauté du contresens et autres essais sur la littérature japonaise (Nantes: Cécile Defaut, 2005)
Karatani, Kojin, "Uses of Aesthetics: After Orientalism", Boundary Two, vol. 25, n°2 (1998), pp. 145-60
Kawakami, Akane, Travellers' Visions: French Literary Encounters with Japan, 1887-2004 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2005)
Walsh Hokenson, Jan, Japan, France, and East-West Aesthetics: French literature, 1867-2000 (Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2004)
Further Secondary Reading
Arlyck, Elisabeth, "Le défi du japonisme: Jean-Philippe Toussaint", in Fabien Arribert-Narce, Kohei Kuwada and Lucy O'Meara (eds), Réceptions de la culture japonaise en France depuis 1945. Paris-Tokyo-Paris: détours par le Japon (2016), pp. 229-46
Boilet, Frédéric, L'Apprenti Japonais (Bruxelles: Les Impressions Nouvelles, 2006)
Bongie, Chris, Exotic Memories: Literature, Colonialism, and the fin de siècle (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991)
Bouvier, Nicolas, Le Vide et le plein: carnets du Japon 1964-1970 (Paris: Gallimard, 2009)
Breuer, Karin, Japanesque: the Japanese Print in the Era of Impressionism (Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 2010)
Buci-Glucksmann, Christine, L'Esthétique du temps au Japon: du zen au virtuel (Paris: Galilée, 2001)
Butor, Michel, Le Japon depuis la France: un rêve à l'ancre (Paris: Hatier, 1995)
DeVonyar, Jill, and Richard Kendall (eds), Degas and the Art of Japan (Yale University Press, 2007)
Ferrier, Michaël, Le Goût de Tokyo (Paris: Mercure de France, 2008)
--, Tokyo, petits portraits de l'aube (Paris: Gallimard, 2004)
--(ed), La Tentation de la France, la tentation du Japon: Regards croisés (Arles: Philippe Picquier, 2002)
--, and Christian Doumet (eds), Penser avec Fukushima (Nantes: Cecile Defaut, 2016)
Forsdick, Charles, Victor Segalen and the Aesthetics of Diversity: Journeys between Cultures (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000)
Forest, Philippe, Sarinagara (Paris: Gallimard, 2006)
Gebhardt, Lisette, and Yûki Masami (eds), Literature and Art After "Fukushima": Four Approaches (EB-Verlag, 2014)
Gegerias, Mary, "Review of Stupeur et tremblements", The French Review, vol. 74, n°4 (2001), pp. 846-47
Guth, Christine, Alicia Volk and Emiko Yamanashi (eds), Japan & Paris: Impressionism, Postimpressionism, and the Modern Era (Honolulu: Honolulu Academy of Arts, 2004)
Ha, Marie-Paule, Figuring the East: Segalen, Malraux, Duras, and Barthes (Albany: SUNY Press, 2000)
Ives, Colta, The Great Wave: The Influence of Japanese Woodcuts on French Prints (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1974)
Lambourne, Lionel, Japonisme: Cultural Crossings between Japan and the West (London: Phaidon, 2005)
Laut, François, Aï (l'amour): impressions japonaises (Paris: Le Serpent à plumes, 2006)
Leuthold, Steven, Cross-cultural Issues in Art: Frames for Understanding (New-York: Routledge, 2011)
Lévi-Strauss, Claude, L'Autre Face de la lune: écrits sur le Japon (Paris: Seuil, 2011)
Loti, Pierre, Japoneries d'Automne (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1889)
--, La Troisième Jeunesse de Madame Prune (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1905)
Lowe, Lisa, Critical Terrains: French and British Orientalisms (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991)
Lupton, Catherine, Chris Marker: Memories of the Future (London: Reaktion, 2005)
Macé, Gérard, Kyoto. Un monde qui ressemble au monde (Paris: Marval, 2000)
--, Un détour par l'Orient (Paris: Gallimard, 2001)
--, "Un détour par le Japon: entretien avec Gérard Macé", in Fabien Arribert-Narce, Kohei Kuwada and Lucy O'Meara (eds), Réceptions de la culture japonaise en France depuis 1945. Paris-Tokyo-Paris : détours par le Japon (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2016), pp. 179-200
Marker, Chris, Tokyo Days (film, 1988)
Mayaux, Catherine (ed), France-Japon: regards croisés. Echanges littéraires et mutations culturelles (Bern: Peter Lang, 2007)
Nappier, Susan, From Impressionism to Anime: Japan as Fantasy and Fan Cult in the Mind of the West (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)
Nothomb, Amélie, Hygiène de l'assassin (Paris: Le Livre de poche, 2004)
--, Stupeur et tremblements (Paris: Le Livre de poche, 2001)
--, Ni d'Eve, ni d'Adam (Paris: Albin Michel, 2007)
--, La Nostalgie heureuse (Paris: Albin Michel, 2013)
O'Meara, Lucy, "Jacques Roubaud's Rejection of Japoniste Influence: Tokyo Infra-ordinaire", in Thomas Baldwin, James Fowler and Ana de Medeiros (eds), Questions of Influence in Modern French Literature (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), pp. 166-79
Perec, Georges, L'Infra-ordinaire (Paris: Seuil, 1989)
Pérol, Jean, Le Soleil se couche à Nippori (Paris: La Différence, 2007)
--, Tokyo (Paris: Champ Vallon, 1993)
Pinguet, Maurice, Le Texte Japon (Paris: Seuil, 2009)
Porter, Dennis, Haunted journeys: Desire and Transgression in European Travel Writing (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991)
Reyns-Chikuma, Chris, Images du Japon en France et ailleurs: entre japonisme et multiculturalisme (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2005)
Roubaud, Jacques, Tokyo infra-ordinaire (Paris: L'Inventaire, 2005)
--, Mono no aware, le Sentiment des choses, cent quarante-trois poèmes empruntés au japonais (Paris: Gallimard, 1970)
Said, Edward, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon, 1978)
Scott, David H. T., Semiologies of Travel: from Gautier to Baudrillard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004)
Segalen, Victor, Essai sur l'exotisme (Paris: Le Livre de Poche, 1999)
Sheringham, Michael, Everyday Life: Theories and Practices from Surrealism to the Present (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009)
Todorov, Tzvetan, Nous et les autres: la réflexion française sur la diversité humaine (Paris: Seuil, 1989)
Topping, Margaret, Eastern Voyages, Western Visions: French Writing and Painting of the Orient (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2004)
Vollmar, Rob, "Frédéric Boilet and the Nouvelle Manga Revolution", World Literature Today, vol. 81, n°2, Graphic Literature (2007), pp. 34-41 |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
By the end of the course, students will have further developed their skills in the areas of research and enquiry, personal and intellectual autonomy, communication, and personal effectiveness. |
| Keywords | Orientalism,Intermediality,French Literature and Visual Culture (19th-21st century),Japanism |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Fabien Arribert-Narce
Tel: (0131 6)50 8414
Email: f.arribert-narce@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Mrs Elsie Gach
Tel: (0131 6)50 8421
Email: Elsie.Gach@ed.ac.uk |
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