Department of French
Changes to Scheduled Papers taken at Part IB and Part II from Tripos 2009
Papers Fr3, Fr4, Fr5, Fr6, Fr7, Fr8, Fr9, Fr10, Fr11
Part IB section B of the above papers will be divided into six authors, texts or individual sub-topics (e.g. le roman personnel, women writers). This will allow the teaching of IB topics to be separated into six manageable units and provide a learning and assessment framework which will be clearly differentiated from that of Part II. Part IB students may also if they wish study topics not included within this framework. The examination paper will be the same for both IB and Part II, but three questions on Section B will be asterisked and designated for IB candidates only. Between three and six of the Part IB individual sub-topics will be named on Section B. Part IB students may also choose any one of those questions not marked with an asterisk.
Sample Examination paper Section B
Part IB students may answer ANY question, choosing from those marked with an asterisk and all others (eg they may answer EITHER 7 (a) OR 7 (b)). Part II students may NOT answer an asterisked question (eg they may answer 7 (a) but NOT 7 (b)).
7 (a) [IB or II] 'Writers in this period undertake, and permit the reader to share, an intense transgression of moral norms.'
OR *(b) [IB only.] 'The novels of Michel Houellebecq show the intrusion of free-market economics into human relationships.'
8 [IB or II] 'Writers in this period represent an arena of fluid desires which can be neither abandoned nor fulfilled.'
9 (a) [IB or II] 'Writers of this period are preoccupied with finding, exploring and exceeding the limits of the self, an enterprise which can never succeed.'
OR *(b) [IB only] 'The boundaries between fiction and autobiography are no longer relevant to late twentieth- and twenty-first century writers'. Discuss with reference to ONE of the following: Guibert, Duras or Angot.
10 [IB or II] 'Writing of this period is preoccupied with marginality, a concern which distracts the reader from the absence of a meaningful centre.'
11 (a) [IB or II] 'Film-makers of this period sacrifice conventional narrative in their desire to represent psychological realities.'
OR *(b) [IB only] 'The films of Alain Resnais offer no answers to the questions of history and trauma they broach.'
12 [IB or II] 'Poetry of this period seeks to use language as a means to mourn, imitate and imagine lost unity.'
13 [IB or II] 'Theatre of this period is characterised above all by an overwhelming consciousness of the artificiality of performance.'
