FREN 5560/8560 – Topics in Nineteenth-Century: The Smelly Nineteenth Century
 

In nineteenth-century France, doctors, public officials and health reformers battled the insalubrious odors of Paris’s public spaces, while the private individual attended to the scent of home and body. It took decades and a convergence of ideas (scientific discoveries, a shift in political thinking toward Republican positivism, increased secularization, France’s mission to “civilize” the peasantry and colonies) to discredit persistent folk etiologies of miasmic contagion (the spread of disease via contaminated, smelly air), in favor of germ theory. This heightened interest in eliminating, masking, and improving odors corresponds to an uneasy relationship between humans and their primitive past. After all, bipedal creatures rely on visual horizons, not scent trails, for safety. Quadrupeds sniff the ground; humans read poetry. Ironically, it is difficult to write about olfactory perception without turning to poetic devices such as metaphor and simile. To write about scent is to join a mode of communication unique to humans, with a sense considered by many to be an evolutionary throwback.

 The suggestion of odors has long contributed to the narrative, poetics, and cultural resonance of French literature. This is especially true in the nineteenth-century, at the height of what Alain Corbin called the golden age of osphresiology. The attentiveness to smell evident in scientific and medical writing of the time parallels a proliferation of novels and poetry featuring fragrant materials and odor perception, despite a much lamented scarcity of words adequate for communicating about smell. Passages rich in aroma express in various ways (depending on the author, the work, the aesthetic inclination) a convergence of mind, body, language, and culture, concentrated in evocations of smelly matter and olfaction. Fragrances seduce, linger, betray and forebode. They twist plots, stir memories, blur borders and signal social status. At the same time, representations of odor (there is no word for olfactive ekphrasis) stylistic innovation.

Primary readings include selected poems, short stories, essays, novels, medical treatises, hygiene reports, etiquette books (excerpts) and newspaper articles.

Secondary readings will be assigned weekly. Students will be active in the selection of these materials.

• Open to graduate students with reading knowledge of French
• Course conducted in French and English (depending on students’ background)
• Most readings in French

Course components (subject to slight revision depending on class size):

FREN 5560

• Reflective essays (3)
• Final Exam (MA exam format; take-home essay)
• Presentation/discussion of a passage (revised after presentation and submitted as a written commentary)
• Preparation and contribution to discussion

FREN 8560

• Reflective essays (3)
• Final paper (written as a journal article)
• Presentation/discussion of an article
• Presentation/discussion of a passage
• Preparation and contribution to discussion

 W 3:30 – 6:00 (Krueger)