It’s been great to get the blog up and running again this week, albeit not always with the most positive of news. To round the week off, a post from our co-Programme Director, Aedín ní Loingsigh, who, along with Mathilde Mazau, ensured that our students were actively involved in choosing one of the set texts they’ll be studying next semester…
“‘C’était une journée de novembre exceptionnelle’ — to paraphrase the opening of Simone de Beauvoir’s Les Belles Images — when students and staff members met for French at Stirling’s inaugural salon littéraire. Up for discussion was de Beauvoir’s novel: Les Belles Images. It has been a much-loved core text on the Stirling pre-honours curriculum for many years. But recent feedback prompted us to consider whether we might change it to gain some new perspectives on feminist movements. Annie Ernaux’s 2000 L’Événement was a suggestion that raised a lot of challenging questions. In the end, staff felt these questions were best answered by our students.
Our students rose to the task in a wonderfully engaging way. With the support of staff members, two teams composed of honours-level students presented compelling arguments to help our pre-honours students decide which novel they would prefer to read in Spring 2024. Embodying the spirit and elegance of Dominique, the vengeful but vulnerable mother of de Beauvoir’s main character, Alice, Daisy, Fiona and Heather recreated one of the novel’s iconic scenes to persuade students who had not yet read it that Les Belles Images was a more relevant, entertaining and linguistically rewarding choice for them. And the coup de grâce (we were sure): Ernaux describes the problems of women of her generation. But de Beauvoir diagnoses them and worked actively to solve them.
Team Ernaux responded with aplomb. Dispensing with the array of props used by team de Beauvoir, Marta and Robyn, with tutor Mathilde Mazau, reminded their audience that Ernaux was a Nobel-prize-winning author; that, being a young student, the character of L’Événement was more than relatable to them; and that Ernaux’s style of writing is closer to that of Edouard Louis, an author many of our pre-honours students had already studied and liked. Not shirking from the difficult issue at the heart of Ernaux’s memoir, the team explained that, while aspects of the novel’s engagement with the subject of illegal abortion were difficult, L’Événement deals with an important and topical issue. They reassured students that with the right preparation and guidance, the novel would give rise to informed, sensitive and balanced conversations in class.
In the end, the barnstorming speeches of team Ernaux won out. 80% of the students who were eligible to vote explained that they had been persuaded that Ernaux’s text was more relevant to their lives and that Ernaux’s Nobel-winning status was an important factor in assessing which author they wanted to read. Arguments that had persuaded students to vote for de Beauvoir were balanced towards the belief that it would be more effective for improving vocabulary and that learning more about de Beauvoir would be motivating. The invaluable advice on good taste provided by Les Belles Images was not a deciding factor…
Many thanks to the students who participated so enthusiastically in this event and to tutor Mathilde Mazau for her hugely effective preparation with them. Congratulations to team Ernaux and commiserations to Team de Beauvoir. All is not lost: next year Dominique plans to rise again and fight in the way only she knows how to!”
Thank you to everyone who was involved in organizing and running the salon littéraire and, in particular, to Aedín for sending through this update. We’ll be curious to see what next semester’s Year 2 students make of Ernaux now.
French at Stirling 
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