IMAGINING FRANCE: Imagining the Outsiders View in

Eighteenth-Century France

Tutor: Dr Ann Lewis (a.lewis@bbk.ac.uk)

Handout for Seminar 3-4:

Seminar overview

The Ingenu continued

1. irony, satire and pathos: using the definitions of irony and pathos
provided in the handout last week, think of one or two examples of how each
of these are used to satirise the different elements of French culture that we
identified last week

2. the global structure of the text:

a. How many major sections would you divide it up into (and why)?
b. How does the tone change in each part?
c. Does each part suggest a different kind of cultural critique?

3. Which characters learn something and change over the course of

the text?

4. (if we have time) how would you say the text negotiates the antithesis
between savage/ primitive virtues, and those of French civilization is
there any shift in perspective as the text (and the character of the Ingenu
evolves?)

5.INTRO to Mme de Graffigny and the Letters of a Peruvian Woman

- Warm up exercise: what does Lettres dune Pruvienne have in

common with Voltaires LIngnu? What is different? Write down a
list of three similarities and differences : think about formal
qualities, style, characterization, elements of cultural critique, etc.)

- (Week 4) Mini-lecture: Graffigny and Lettres dune Pruvienne

(Graffignys uvre, editions of LP, its reception, the epistolary
style, the epistolary novel: love stories and philosophical content)

Class discussion: the epistolary style (discussion of quotation 3)

1
Some definitions from the New OED (unless indicated
otherwise):

Irony:
the expression of ones meaning by using language that normally
signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect
[]
Dramatic/tragic irony: a literary technique, originally used in
Greek tragedy, by which the full significance of a characters
words or actions are clear to the audience or reader although
unknown to the character
-- ORIGIN: early 16th century (also denoting Socratic irony): via
Latin from Greek eirneia simulated ignorance, from eirn
dissembler
See the Penguin dictionary of Literary Terms for fuller account.

Pathos:
a quality that evokes pity or sadness
-- ORIGIN: mid 17th cent.: from Greek pathos suffering and
penthos grief

Howells (in The Pruvienne and Pathos, p.453):

The insistent representation of emotional suffering, especially in
an innocent subject, and the effect on the reader

Satire:
the use of humour, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose or
criticize peoples stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of
contemporary politics and other topical issues
[noun] play, novel, film, or other work which uses satire; a
genre of literature characterized by the use of satire
-- ORIGIN: early 16th cent.: from French, or from Latin satira,
later form of satura poetic medley

Extract from Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms:

The satirist is [] a self-appointed guardian of standards, ideals
and truth; of moral and aesthetic values. He [] takes it apon
himself to correct, censure and ridicule the follies and vices of
society, and thus to bring contempt and derision upon
aberrations from a desirable and civilized norm. Thus satire is a
kind of protest, a sublimation and refinement of anger and
indignation. As Ian Jack has put it very adroitly: Satire is born
of the instinct to protest; it is protest become art.

Nave:
[adjective] (of a person or action) showing a lack of experience,
wisdom, or judgement;
(of a person) natural and unaffected (unsophisticated); innocent
-- ORIGIN: mid 17th century: from French nave, feminine of naf,
from Latin nativus native, natural
2