Courses

A French inquisitor said in the 17 th century: “To one wizard, ten thousand witches.” The
witches were seen, not only as “female wizards,” but as qualitatively different from
wizards and warlocks. There was something fundamentally female about their magic. At
first sight, witches, fairies and female vampires differ greatly. Yet they all embody a
certain female (supernatural or natural) power, that fearful men tried to restrain and
stigmatize over the centuries. Daughters of both Eros and Thanatos, they share features
that were frowned upon by political and religious institutions. Moreover, female vampires
may be former witches, while witches are often given names actually referring to fairies:
the borders between those categories, whether it is in medieval or romantic literature,
are definitely not as rigid as they might initially seem. The struggle against or for female
magic occurred within literature and art. This class aims at showing how the artistic and
literary representation of those creatures evolved from medieval times until our own,
oscillating between condemnation, ambiguous fascination, and mere rehabilitation. It
questions the role of gender politics in the literary construction of witchcraft and other
supernatural phenomena. An important place is given to female French writers, who, for
obvious reasons, envisioned those topics in a peculiar way, frequently turning
negative stereotypes into sources of empowerment. The final two weeks will be devoted
to a comparative, French-American approach to the Salem trials. We will discuss literary
excerpts, short stories and poems (mostly in French though a vast majority are
accessible in translation) as well as paintings and movies. The class is taught in French.
It is principally designed for French and Comparative Literature majors, or advances
undergraduates with a good knowledge of French.