Paving the Way to Literary Analysis Through TV Commercials

Abstract

This article presents an approach to introducing literature to high school and college students in their second or third year of French. The aim is to reconcile the goals of literature courses with the backgrounds and motivations of students, by taking advantage of the popularity of TV commercials. After showing the close connection between advertising and literature, the authors present a detailed lesson structure, both student‐ and text‐centered, that helps students analyze commercials and their effects on TV viewers. This procedure, based on the work of Compte (1993), is then applied to the analysis of a literary selection.