Training objectives:
The course, which completes the literary training that began in the first year of the three-year Degree course, aims to provide students with a method of analysis and understanding of any literary phenomenon, both diachronic and synchronous, based on the knowledge acquired in previous years. Through the model of the analysis of one of the most fruitful seasons of French fictional experimentation – the so-called fin de siècle that will influence all European fiction – the aim of the course is to enable students to gain advanced knowledge of the history of French literature and culture and to consolidate the acquisition of theoretical and applicative tools for linguistic and literary analysis.

Expected learning outcomes:
As part of the Master’s Degree Course, the course aims to complete the students’ training in the literary field and to consolidate their ability to understand the problems and epistemological horizon of French literature. It is the final step in the consolidation of critical skills, knowledge of methodological techniques of literary analysis and the ability to develop an autonomous critical thinking.

Knowledge and comprehension abilities:
- knowledge and understanding of the various forms of fictional experimentation of the last twenty years of the nineteenth century;
- in-depth knowledge of the evolution of the fin de siècle novel and of its decisive action in the definition of the twentieth-century novel;
- ability to understand, analyze and contextualize French-language literary texts at all levels.

Autonomy of judgment:
- ability to describe and interpret literary phenomena of any period and of any kind of French literature;
- ability to reformulate issues related to social and historical-cultural contexts of various literary eras;
- ability to develop and apply original ideas relating to the various literary manifestations of the culture and language of reference.

Communication skills:
- ability to present, in oral and written form, in consideration of the various types of text, information, ideas or problems relating to any phenomenon of French literature to specialist and non-specialist interlocutors.