A Thematic Approach to French Cultural Studies

Book excerpt: A Thematic Approach to French Cultural Studies: Love, Sex and Desire in French Literature and Cinema introduces a selection of major literary texts and film adaptations to students at the intermediate college and university level. The goal of this book is to provide a theme-based approach for teaching French Cultural Studies by enabling undergraduate students to contextualise and to think conceptually about French culture and its place in the Western culture and tradition. One of the most noteworthy aspects of this book is that it includes a collection of effective hands-on activities, multimedia resources and teaching suggestions which will stimulate students to develop their cultural and literary competency. The text-based method is designed to encourage close reading of three representative novels in English translation and foster an independent approach to formulating problems and arguments related to specific cultural norms and patterns.