Two topics are offered 2009/2010. Students may take one or both for credit. Topic for Fall 2009: Epic in the French Renaissance. Explores the evolution of the epic genre in France (c. 1532-1616). Authors studied include Rabelais, Du Bellay, Ronsard, d’Aubigné, and others. Topics include epic and national unity, epic and religious war, epic and the sister arts. Topic for Spring 2010: Travel Narrative in Early Modern France. From Montaigne’s reflections on the age of exploration to Voltaire’s satirical picaresque novel Candide. Real and imagined travel as adventure, freedom, captivity, constraint, inner voyage, discovery. Relevance of cultural, political, technological, and economic developments to the evolution of travel narrative.