Building Bridges from Language to Civilization through Gisèle Pineau’s Un Papillon dans la cité

Abstract

This chapter discusses a French civilization course that uses the work of a Francophone woman writer to explore, nuance, and further students’ understanding of French society. It presents the theoretical underpinnings that determine the shape of the course. Students are required to read other non-fiction materials of increasing difficulty but the literary text at the core of the course brings them back to something that they can read and understand, and something to which they can come back, throughout the semester. Traditional survey courses of French literature span centuries of well-known, influential writers such as Rabelais, Balzac, Stendhal, Apollinaire, and Colette. Furthermore, the course appeals to a wide variety of students’ interests since it melds literary and non-literary texts and focuses on an array of aspects of French culture. The literary text again provides the bridge to the next part of the course, which studies political and social institutions.