Love and Death in French Culture (MLF1014)

15 credits

Love and Death are two of the most obsessively recurring themes in French cultural production. This module looks at how Love and Death are represented in a range of French texts, images and films from the medieval period to the present day, tracing the development of these themes and considering the extent to which they are interdependent. We discuss the frequent conflicts between lovers and society, examining how society may isolate lovers, and condemn love relationships deemed to fall outside the norm. The set texts/films chart a wide range of human love relationships. Death is revealed as the inevitable subtext, and potential outcome, of all these relationships.