“French Fairy Tales from Folklore to Film”
Reserved for First-Year Interest Group (FIG) students. See http://www.figs.wisc.edu/. Meets “Humanities” requirement. Counts towards the Folklore Certificate. French 211 FIG students must enroll in Folklore 100 and a French language course of the appropriate level.
Warning: This class will change what you think about Disney movies. What makes a fairy tale recognizable? Are they really for children? Why are references to fairy tales prevalent even today in everything from politics to pop music? Can literature or film make an age-old traditional tale original—if “originality” is even possible? How do fairy tales fare in the internet age? This class will explore these and other questions by considering various fairy tale examples (in English translation) from France and the French-speaking world (e.g., Francophone Africa, Martinique, Louisiana, and even Wisconsin where French-Canadian immigrants brought stories with them). These include tales that circulated by word-of-mouth, tales adapted to the big screen by masters of cinema like Jacques Demy, and “literary” fairy tales by seventeenth-century French women or by contemporary writers. Through “online fieldwork,” you will apply what you learn in your French class and in Folklore 100 to compile and analyze examples of fairy tales in art, music, marketing, or political cartoons found in cyberspace. As you work on course assignments targeting critical thinking and writing, we will learn together about campus resources which you can use throughout your time at the UW, like the Writing Center, DesignLab, and Software Training for Students.