Well, the first official "school week" has ended; for me this means Monday through Thursday. Monday was a holiday so there was no class and my first Wednesday was delayed until next week as was my Thursday class. This meant that in the first week of school I only had to attend one class.
That being said; don't be fooled. This first class is what they call the Proseminar which is essentially a required theory course. I was assigned two texts to prepare for class, one by Paul Valéry and another by Marcel Proust, both either assertions of their methods or critiques of others. I spent all of Tuesday evening and Wednesday preparing these two texts. Both were very informative and I must admit it was refreshing to dip my feet back into the subject. However, that which they put forward was for me rather complex, due to the fact that I had yet to attend class and the historicity of the texts wasn't entirely made plain to me.
Class came and lasted for nearly two hours (an hour shorter than what I was used to at the U). I managed to scribble down six or seven pages of notes and then spent the rest of the evening and a large majority of this morning transcribing them and trying to make sense of the finer points of le Formalisme. This necessitated reading an entire section of an independent theory book to get a clear grasp on the subject. The rest of the day has been spent reading a préface on a work entitled
l'Astrée de Honoré d'Urfé, an author of the 17th Century which required several searches into other sources for a complete comprehension.
The good news is the French is coming back rapidly - as I am sure you could imagine - and I can only guess as to where my progress will be by the end of the semester.
