B2. George Sand’s Third Rustic Novel

After the great success of The Devil’s Pool (1846), George Sand wrote The Country Waif, and by the time that one had been published (1848), she had already begun writing the third in her series of rustic novels, Little Fadette, which would be published the following year. These three works, with their idealized peasants, sensitive dialogues and poetic vision, were praised by Gustave Lanson as masterpieces of the idyllic genre in France. Though Sand’s emphasis on themes of class and gender was controversial in the middle of the nineteenth century, the importance of such concerns to twenty-first-century readers suggests that she was clearly ahead of her time. Discussion of the novel may include references to the author's brilliant autobiography.

Instructor - Lillian Corti obtained her doctorate from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and went on to teach Italian, French, World Literature, Comparative Drama and Women’s Literature at various institutions including the Foreign Language Institute in New York, Tulsa University, the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, and the Athens Center in Greece. 

Required Text: Little Fadette, trans. J. M. Lancaster, (Hawthorne Classics, 2020).