La Satire

This course is an introduction to satire in French and Francophone literature. A classical literary technique of denunciation, satire has been recently adopted and adapted in popular televised shows (Les Guignols de l’info in France, Kouthia Show in Senegal, SNL in the US) to recapture important sociopolitical events throughout the world. In our selection of literary texts, films, and sketches such as Alioune Badara Bèye’s Les Larmes de la patrie, Moussa Absa Sène’s Tableau Ferraille and Dieudonné’s Le Président africain, we will analyze why and how authors make use of satire to denounce the most prevailing problems faced by French and Francophone societies at given times of their historical trajectories.