Le contenu de ce site représente tout simplement la somme des devoirs exigés pendant les seize semaines du programme CHUCOL, la création des pages mêmes étant mon projet de premier trimestre.

Le projet de deuxième trimestre, par contre, est le suivant: 'de formuler et réaliser une [...] oeuvre de votre propre conception, [...] étroitement liée à, et inspirée par, vos autres études universitaires'. Cette oeuvre peut subvenir 'soit aux besoins personnels, soit aux besoins des étudiants [...] à venir'. (Voir aussi les spécifications anglaises.)

Vu que j'ai terminé mon deuxième cycle il y a longtemps, j'ai décidé d'essayer, plutôt, de combler un vide dans les provisions éléctroniques du département auquel je suis attachée, et plus précisément, de monter un site web pour le programme, French Literature, History and Thought since 1890. Un lien au site même se trouve à gauche; la proposition originelle et le rapport final se situent ci-dessous.

A Support Site for Paper Fr10: French Literature, Thought & History after 1890

The aim of this project is to provide students of twentieth-century French literature, particularly students of the Cambridge University paper Fr10, with on-line bibliographical, socio-cultural, and practical information, as well as a series of links to related resources. At present, departmental provision for Fr10 is limited, in documentary terms, to one vast (somewhat intimidating) reading list; I hope to re-present the contents of that list in such a way as to enable students to make an informed choice of topics and authors. The site will also house the kind of contextual material, above all history, which members of staff do not currently have the time to present in lecture-format.

Computationally, the project requires similar skills to those involved in completion of the first assignment: HTML 4.0 including style sheets; JavaScript for presentational purposes; scanning and visual editing using Adobe Photoshop or similar; analysing and selecting existing on-line sources. The site will have four principle areas: one devoted to historical background (outline chronologies, summaries of major events); one to cultural and aesthetic trends (broad definitions of surrealism, Dadaism and so on); one to authors (an A-Z based on the departmental reading-list); and one to Fr10 practicalities (past papers). A sample page from the A-Z can be found at

http://thor.cam.ac.uk/~ejt1002/projet/AZ/Apollinaire.html

Introduction

The inspiration for a learning support site for Paper Fr.10 came not from my own mind, but from those of my colleagues whom I consulted as to what I could best do to contribute to the French department's resources. Although any scheduled paper might benefit from such a site, 'Literature, History, and Thought since 1890' by definition confronts students with a far broader swathe of material than many other courses; its reading list is now so long as to be almost unwieldy, and there is very little documentary guidance as to how students should or could select the authors and texts that they would most enjoy studying. This project is intended to go some way towards remedying that deficit: by re-presenting the contents of the reading list in 'digestible' chunks; by situating individual works of literature within a broader cultural and historical context; by indicating the type of questions likely to be raised in an examination; and most of all, by pointing students towards the increasing array of other information channels that may be accessed via the internet.

Layout and Design

The site consists of a home-page and three sections: Chronologie, a single-page summary of the historical and literary events of the period 1890-1990; Auteurs, an introductory page plus seven secondary pages detailing the forty-nine authors specified by the Fr.10 co-ordinators; and Epreuves, again an introductory page plus seven others, in this instance copies of the seven examination papers set between 1995 and 2001. Although I have sought to facilitate navigation throughout, the pattern of internal linkage is not consistent. In each section, rather, the arrangement of the links reflects the use to which that section might, in practice, be put. Thus, Chronologie, 'background material' likely to be read in one or two sittings, contains only two links to the home-page, and two internal anchors, to the starting- and mid- points of the century respectively. Auteurs, on the other hand, has links to the home-page and to the index of names within every authorial 'sub'-section, and the introductory page enables the user to access any given writer immediately; the supposition, here, being that the section would be referenced on an intermittent and ad hoc basis, not browsed in its entirety. Epreuves, I felt, might be put to one of three uses: either, the perusal of a particular year's questions; or, the comparison of different examples of one kind of question, such as commentary; or, the pursuit of titles relevant to a named subject, say, Gide. Whilst the individual papers, therefore, contain a minimum of links, the introductory page notes the authors specified in each year, and provides direct access to the sub-sections of that year's paper, defined, in accordance with examination protocol, as 'A', 'B' and 'C'.

Two criteria governed the design of the site. Firstly, it was to be clear, uncluttered and under-stated, precluding the use of multi-coloured iconography and (potentially distracting) 'special' effects. Secondly, it should reflect something of the spontaneous, often unorthodox, nature of much literary and artistic creation during the twentieth century, as well as the course of composition and publication prior to the advent of the word processor. The 'form', in other words, should reinforce the content. To this end, I settled on a cream, red and black colour scheme which was not simply easy on the eye, but also reminiscent of the old Editions Gallimard paperbacks, (examples of which can be found on their web site). With respect to the titles, I wanted typography that would appear calligraphic, yet not baroque. The font I eventually found ('annifont', at the Flaming Text site) has one major disadvantage: it does not include accents, though I tried to atone for this, where necessary, by emphasizing the inflection in the 'alt' tag. 'Annifont' was, however, the sole font to elicit the same, bold, strokes that characterized many of the illustrations, including Apollinaire's calligramme and Picasso's pen-and-ink portrait of Jarry. Finally, and in order to increase the visual appeal and interactivity of the site, I included a limited number of (subtle) 'roll-overs', and a 'hovering' shift in the colour of the textual links.

Images

My initial decision to incorporate visual content into the site stemmed from an awareness of the cross-over, and cross-fertilisation, that occurred between literature and art in the first half of the century, in particular, as well as the realization that this generic interaction was becoming an increasingly frequent topic in examinations and lectures. It struck me, too, that students with a special interest in the history of the image would be better able to select authors who matched that interest if they were presented with an appropriately illustrated reading list, rather than a mere catalogue of texts. The first images I included, therefore, were designed to indicate either a first-hand involvement in art on the part of a given author (Artaud's self-portrait, Klossowski's drawing for La Révocation de l’édit de Nantes), or an affiliation with an artistic or multi-media movement such as Surrealism (Man Ray's portrait of André Breton). As the Auteurs section developed, however, I saw that its format would necessitate either an image to accompany every writer, or the removal of the existing images. By taking the former course, I concluded, I would be providing a short-hand insight into the author concerned (who they were, how others perceived them) without having to compose a 'potted' biography. Although this makes the site heavier and slower to load, the recent appearance of an on-line reading list on the faculty server means that students can opt for a 'light' version of the information offered in the Auteurs section, there, should they be pressed for time.

Several factors affected the choice of pictures; availability, obviously, being foremost amongst them. In some instances, such as that of Blanchot, (who has consciously avoided photographers during his career,) I was forced to signal a 'positive' absence of imagery using a white or modified white square motif. In other instances, copyright became the issue. Wherever possible, I have used images which are already freely in circulation on the web. Where copyright restrictions prevent the use of portraits of a writer, as in the cases of Cixous and Djebar, an 'alternative' take on the oeuvre has been provided: a Medusa head, in homage to Cixous’s celebrated essay, 'Le rire de la Méduse'; a detail from Delacroix's painting, Femmes d'Alger dans leur appartement, in acknowledgement of Djebar's novella of the same name. One further consideration has been variety. Whilst the majority of the images inserted into the Auteurs section are monochromatic, the medium often changes. In the Chronologie section, by contrast, where pictures serve not to accompany but to demarcate and encapsulate the decades, the selection is wholly photographic; the subjects, nonetheless, range from cityscapes to battles.

Textual Content

The avant-propos to the Auteurs section is a more or less exact translation of the preamble to the official reading list, approved by Martin Crowley, who wrote the original. The details given on the authorial pages differ from that reading list in three respects; firstly, I have provided the full names of the literary critics recommended, in order to facilitate searching on library catalogues; secondly, I have covered four writers who are not currently specified but will appear on an up-dated version of the departmental document due out in September, namely, Desnos, Kateb, Rochefort and Wittig; thirdly, I have suggested between one and four links for each individual. Where a number of sites devoted to the individual in question exist, the links are those that lead, in my view, to the most appropriate and informative material available. Where there is very little of substance to be found on-line, I have included links to short biographical texts, interviews or news clippings.

The Chronologie is based on the time-lines appended to Maurice Agulhon, The French Republic 1879-1992, trans. Antonia Nevill (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993) and Alfred Cobban, A History of Modern France III: France of the Republics, 1871-1962 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965). I have, however, tempered these authors' emphases on parliamentary and ministerial politics somewhat, as well as interspersing the historical chronology with allusions to the publication of significant literary works. In the interests of concision, I have eschewed full explanations of major political scandals such as the Dreyfus Affair, referring the reader, instead, to relevant historical web sites. Where the Epreuves section is concerned, the avant-propos is my own composition, whilst the exam papers themselves are faithful transcriptions of the originals held in the University Library.

Computing techniques

The site was coded without recourse to an authoring package, and corrected using an on-line HTML Validator. The images were, in the main, downloaded from the internet and then edited with Microsoft Paint; exceptions being the illustrations included in the examinations for 1996-7 and 1998-9, which were scanned in from a photocopy of the original paper, and a copy of the appropriate novel, respectively. Much of the textual information incorporated into the Auteurs section was taken from a floppy disk version of the departmental reading list, and subsequently checked against the University Library catalogue. The remainder of the site was typed in by hand, including the examination questions, since I did not, unfortunately, have access to an O.C.R. programme at the time that I was working on the Epreuves section. The JavaScript employed to produce the 'roll-over' effects is a modified version of the code deployed in my first-term project. The site does not use frames, as I felt that they would significantly restrict the scope and flexibility of the pages' design, without enhancing the user's experience in any marked degree.

Conclusion

In my original proposal for this project, I outlined a larger array of pages than I have in fact had time to complete. At that stage, however, I was unaware of the hours that I would ultimately devote to picture research, in particular. The result has been a more visually varied site then I had anticipated; it is, also, I hope, a better site.

Emily Tomlinson, 23rd April 2002.