Term 1

1. Film La Reine Margot: the Saint-Bartholomew's massacres: how did it ever get this far? Introduction to the French Renaissance; the Wars of Religion

2. Renaissance and Reformation: the spread of the ‘new religion’; print culture ; the Tools of the Trade I (skills session - reading sixteenth-century French texts)

3. Rabelais / Erasmus (extracts) - (Just) War and Peace

4. The Tools of the Trade II (skills session - databases; working with rare books / political pamphlets)

5. Catholics: Ronsard, Discours des Misères de ce temps

6. [Reading Week]

7. Catholics: Ronsard, Discours des Misères de ce temps (continued)

8. Catholics: Remy Belleau's De belllo Huguenotico (in translation)

9. France, Religion, Violence and the New World

10. Protestant Resistance Theory: the Monarchomachs

Term 2

1. Huguenots: Agrippa d’Aubigné, Les Tragiques (Misères, Princes, Fers)

2. Huguenots: Agrippa d’Aubigné, Les Tragiques (continued)

3. the Politiques: La Satyre Ménippée

4. the Politiques: La Satyre Ménippée (continued)

5. Word and image: Richard Verstegan, Le Théâtre des cruautés

6. Reading week

7. Montaigne, I.45 ‘De la bataille de Dreux’; ‘Des Cannibales’; II.11 ‘De la cruauté’; II.12 ‘Apologie de Raimond de Sebonde’

8. Montaigne (continued)

9. Robert Merle's Fortune de France (1977)

10. La Reine Margot (again): layered views of the past + Conclusions (discussing common threads such as 'gender, violence and religion')