Congratulations to St Hugh’s undergraduate student of French, Poppy Littler-Jennings (Modern Languages, 2023), who has been awarded the Claude Massart Prize for the Best Performance in French Literature across Oxford University for the academic year 2023-2024, following her outstanding preliminary examination results. Poppy was required to write three essays, choosing from questions about the four set texts: La Chastelaine de Vergy, Les Liaisons dangereuses, Indiana, and Traversée de la Mangrove.
Poppy said, ‘I truly relished studying these texts, and I particularly enjoyed exploring the ways in which French writers implicate certain themes and messages through the medium of fiction. I was equally fascinated by the way in which writers use extra-diegetic spaces within their novels to foreground their ideas, an especially prominent skill of Maryse Condé, my favourite author from this year. I am looking forward to further expanding my repertoire of French literature throughout the rest of my time studying at St Hugh’s and discovering more about the artful nuances of fiction’.
