The French Short Story: from Balzac to Maupassant

• Credit value: 15 credits at Level 6

Through a selection of texts from key nineteenth-century authors (Balzac, Gautier, Flaubert and Maupassant) this module examines the short story genre and the problems of value, definition and critical approach it has generated (for instance its relationship to the 'conte' and 'recueils'), as well as the recurrent themes and leitmotifs with which it is commonly associated, such as the supernatural, the fantastic, perverse humour, cruelty and suspense.

Aside from analysing the generic, structural and stylistic features of the short story, the module also places each story in its intellectual and social context, thereby offering a snapshot of the central aesthetic and ideological concerns of the author in question. Not only do the authors studied therefore allow us to map the evolution of the short story as a genre in the nineteenth-century, but this genre in turn sheds valuable light on a particularly rich and rapidly changing period of French cultural and social history.