Exposé #1

On Wednesday, I delivered my first exposé; an exposé is an analysis of a reading, a complete unfolding of its meaning and its importance. This was for my Louis XV class, and the reading of the week was an extract of Montesquieu's Persian Letters, an epistolary novel which I absolutely adored when I read it in English with Prof. Kaplan (if you ever have the opportunity, I recommend the Penguin Edition's translation). There were fragments of two letters, both of which discussed the French monarchy, its absolutism, and its similarities and differences to the "oriental despotism" that reigned in Persia.

I worked exhaustively on preparation, consulting multiple works, in French and English, in order to fully illuminate all of the references and allusions. I read about venality of posts, about royal finances, about the king's scrofula-healing touch, about Persian Letters in general, and about ennoblement. In order to better illustrate my points, I accompanied my lecture with a graph and a series of statistics, and with a painting by Watteau, stapled to my bibliography (when you deliver an exposé in France, you need to type up your bibliography and the outline of your lecture, and pass it around the class). I had already verified with the professor that I could have a longer time limit than my classmates, in order to compensate for the fact that I would be speaking more slowly and more clearly, due to my heavy American accent. I rehearsed twice all the way through, and also practiced snippets, correcting the many grammatical errors that I had failed to detect when I typed them, and making certain I knew how to pronounce every word that I had typed (for instance, I eliminated the sentence with the word guigogne, which means Russian doll, because I didn't want to mispronounce it).

I have never delivered a lecture to such a sterile audience; sterile is the only way to describe the reception. I didn't notice anyone looking at the graphs or the painting; nobody took notes; nobody asked any questions; and when I checked, twice, to verify that everyone could hear and understand me, nobody budged: all I received were blank stares. In other words, for all I know, nobody could understand a single word that I spoke. After I had finished, the professor commented (note: French professors often give students constructive criticism after their exposés) that I should not have analyzed the letters separately, and that there was more than just Montesquieu (I'm still not certain what this latter comment meant). Then, she told the other students to prepare a three-part breakdown (all analyses come in 3s, and only in 3s, in France) of the reading, i.e., replicate what I should have done. So we sat in silence, literally for 20-25 minutes.

I'm not upset, only puzzled. My exposé was well-organized (I thought), but I guess it just wasn't organized the way it should have been? Why was the class so dead? It wasn't even morning; the class took place from 1:00-3:00 in the afternoon, so nobody should have had any reason to still be half-asleep.

I know that I had problems. I think my biggest problem, if I correctly interpret the professor's words, was that I analyzed the text as a primary source, rather than using it as a template to discuss absolute monarchy. I also might have over-contextualized, even though I cut a fair share of what I had typed. However, I did not limit myself to Montesquieu; I compared his viewpoint to that of some of his contemporaries of the same social class, and also analyzed his view of French history and government in light of modern historiography.

Pauline and I are going to keep on plugging away at our finance ministry exposé this weekend, due in one week from now. Maybe this one will go over better? I remain hopeful.

~JD

"The thrust of Arab opinion in [the 1908 Ottoman] Parliament remained in the direction of unity and uniformity within the imperial framework, not towards particularism" (Kayali, Arabs and Young Turks, 1908).