[nh999]

Professor: Dr. Gabriel Moyal
Taken: Term 2, 2008
Course Description: Aspects of the development of 19th-century French literature up to 1848. (sorry that's really all it says)

For all those people thinking about minoring in French, make sure you complete your 3 units of literature! Or you might just be interested in taking a French lit course as an elective, but you need to have taken 1A06 or 2M06. If you're not so into literature but want the minor, I suggest you just take a second year French lit course (as opposed to a 3rd year one. I have taken one of each.). This one is not too bad.

Course Breakdown:
Essay (1500-1800 words) 30%
-> Choice of essay topics or discuss topic with prof.
-> Must write on at least two of the novels.
-> Choice of working in small groups (2-3 I think?) or independently

Summaries (best 3 of 4) 20%
-> There are 6 books so that means you don't have to read them all!
-> You are allowed to redo your summaries until you get a good mark. However, when I took the course, some people redid their summaries so many times that he started restricting it to only 1 redo because otherwise he didn't have time to edit our essays.

Participation 10%
-> I didn't figure out how he graded this. He takes attendance though, where you just sign your initials on a sheet of paper next to your name. However, apparently he can tell if someone else signed for you by comparing to your other signatures from other days so you can't cheat that way. Not sure if that's just to scare the students and force them to come to class...well he notices if you come to class anyway, even if you're quiet (class size was about 50).

Final exam 40%
-> 10 quotes: identify the speaker/context, title & author of novel.
-> essay: I think there was a choice of topic given before the exam so that you can prepare ahead. You must write about at least two novels that you did not base your assignment essay on.

General Commentary
Pros
I thought the course was structured well. Dr. Moyal really cares about his students so if you ever have trouble with your summaries, essays or the content, he is open for that. For instance I kept getting 70s on my summaries and went to him to ask how I could make that at least an 80. He does look a little intimidating at first but jokes around in his lectures to try to keep your attention. Beware of the sudden shouts though! He does that a lot to keep people awake, but he's not actually angry.

Cons
I do warn that it can be time consuming for the essay component and the fact that you really should keep up with your readings. He gives you two weeks to read each novel, but they're not that thick, and the thickest, La Mare au Diable, is an easy read (he doesn't change his novels.). I'm not much of a reader so it was a hassle for me to keep up. I also spent something like 8 hours on the second snow day finishing the essay. Kind of sucked. I gave it a 5 for easiness because of this.

Also, don't worry about taking notes of everything in lectures because you're not really tested on all that Napoleon history. That's just to give you a better sense of historical context.

Summary
Overall, this course was better than I expected. I was actually not looking forward at all to taking a lit course thinking that it would definitely pull down my grades, but it ended up pulling it up!