Assignment One: “Les Chats”
The first paper is to be a metacritical discussion in which you are expected to synthesize, review, analyze, and reflect on the main arguments presented in four different articles, representing different approaches to reading Charles Baudelaire’s poem “Les Chats.” Everyone will critique the same 3 articles and will choose a fourth critical study that represents another approach of your choice (most are available as PDF documents online or though the MLA site via UBC Library). The three articles include:
- Roman Jakobson and Claude Lévi-Strauss, “Baudelaire’s ‘Les Chats’”. Language and Literature, by Roman Jakobson, eds Krystyna Pomorska and Stephen Rudy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1987. 180-97. See also the original article in French (also here), and a Spanish translation.
- Michael Riffaterre, “Describing Poetic Structures: Two Approaches to Baudelaire’s ‘Les Chats’”. Yale French Studies 36/37 (1966): 200-42.
- Plottel, Jeanine Parisier, “The Battle of Charles Baudelaire’s ‘Les Chats’”. Romanic Review 74.1 (1983): 91-103.
- An article of your choice. Please provide a copy of the article you have selected with your paper. (You could choose something like this, just to give an example of a completely different approach: Roland A. Champagne, “The Devil’s Advocate: Baudelaire’s Cat as the Daîmon of Erotic Mysticism in Les Fleurs du Mal.” Romanic Review 93.4 (2002): 427-44.)
