One of the main aims of this Course of Study is to provide students with advanced knowledge of two foreign literatures related to the two languages of their choice, paying special attention to intercultural and transcultural dynamics. The course also aims at refining their ability to interpret cultural phenomena, using the tools and methodologies of literary, cultural and historical analysis.
English Literature III is among the characterizing activities of the "Foreign Literatures" area. It aims at providing the students with a good knowledge of nineteenth and twentieth century English Literature with special attention to intercultural dynamics and the theoretical-methodological debate; it helps students discover the tools and methodologies of literary, cultural and historical analysis at an advanced level.
At the end of the module, students will reach an advanced critical ability in the interpretation of exemplary texts in the original language, as well as the necessary competence for oral rewording, translation, rewriting and adaptation in Italian of the texts themselves. They will also be able to re-elaborate and communicate disciplinary knowledge in a specialized and non-specialized intercultural context.
Pre-requisite: English Literature II; English Language and Translation II
English Literature III is among the characterizing activities of the "Foreign Literatures" area. It aims at providing the students with a good knowledge of nineteenth and twentieth century English Literature with special attention to intercultural dynamics and the theoretical-methodological debate; it helps students discover the tools and methodologies of literary, cultural and historical analysis at an advanced level.
At the end of the module, students will reach an advanced critical ability in the interpretation of exemplary texts in the original language, as well as the necessary competence for oral rewording, translation, rewriting and adaptation in Italian of the texts themselves. They will also be able to re-elaborate and communicate disciplinary knowledge in a specialized and non-specialized intercultural context.
Pre-requisite: English Literature II; English Language and Translation II
Canali
teacher profile teaching materials
The texts we will study will allow us to to trace the evolution of the main poetica and narrative form which have dominated English literature in the XIX and XX centuries. The narrative texts are meant to create pairs that will illustrate contrasts and similarities among these various forms: Wuthering Heights vs. Jane Eyre - “The Tale” vs. “The Mark on the Wall” - The Prime of Miss Brodie vs. Wide Sargasso Sea; each one of these texts will be used to set up a perspective from which to study contemporary British culture.
The first hour will be devoted to fiction, the second to poetry.
- Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights, 1847 (novel)
- R. L. Stevenson, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, 1886 (novella)
- Joseph Conrad, “The Tale”, 1917 (short short story )
- Virginia Woolf, “The Mark on the Wall”, 1917 (short short story)
- Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Brodie, 1961 (short novel)
- Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea, 1966 (novel)
- Hanif Kureishi, "My Son the Fanatic", 1994 (short story)
Reading List:
- Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, 1847 (novel)
- E. M. Forster, Passage to India, 1924 (novel)
Poetry
William Wordsworth, “Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey” (1798), “Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802”;
P. B. Shelley, “Ode to the West Wind” (1819);
John Keats, “On first looking into Chapman’s Homer” (1816), “Ode to a Nightingale” (1819), “Ode on a Grecian Urn” (1820);
Lord Byron, “She Walks in Beauty” (1813), “On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year” (1824);
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “Sonnet 43” (1846);
Matthew Arnold, “Dover Beach” (1867);
G. M. Hopkins, “The Windhover” (1877);
Rudyard Kipling, “If—” (1895);
Thomas Hardy, “The Convergence of the Twain” (1912);
Thomas Stearns Eliot, “The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock” (1915);
William Butler Yeats, “Easter, 1916” (1921), “Sailing to Byzantium” (1928);
W. H. Auden, “As I Walked Out One Evening” (1940);
Dylan Thomas, “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” (1951);
Derek Walcott, “Love After Love” (1976), “The Season of Phantasmal Peace” (1981)
Bibliography
Andrew Sanders, Storia della letteratura inglese dal XIX secolo al postmoderno, a cura di Anna Anzi, Mondadori, Milano, 2000.
Marcello Pagnini (a cura di), Il Romanticismo, Il Mulino, Bologna 1986.
Gianni Cianci (a cura di), Il Modernismo, Il Mulino, Bologna.
Jack Stillinger (ed.), Twentieth century interpretations of Keats's Odes : a collection of critical essays, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1968
Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae, Yale University Press, 1990.
Richard Ambrosini, “Lo specchio come psiche in The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde di R. L. Stevenson”. In Agostino Lombardo (a cura di). Gioco di specchi: Saggi sull’uso letterario dell’immagine dello specchio. Bulzoni, Roma, 1999, pp. 271-87.
Helen Vendler, Our Secret Discipline, Oxford University Press, 2007.
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, "Three Women's Texts and a Critique of Imperialism", Inquiry, Vol. 12, No. 1(Autumn, 1985), pp.243-261.
Programme
The texts we will study will allow us to to trace the evolution of the main poetica and narrative form which have dominated English literature in the XIX and XX centuries. The narrative texts are meant to create pairs that will illustrate contrasts and similarities among these various forms: Wuthering Heights vs. Jane Eyre - “The Tale” vs. “The Mark on the Wall” - The Prime of Miss Brodie vs. Wide Sargasso Sea; each one of these texts will be used to set up a perspective from which to study contemporary British culture.
The first hour will be devoted to fiction, the second to poetry.
Core Documentation
Novels and Short Stories- Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights, 1847 (novel)
- R. L. Stevenson, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, 1886 (novella)
- Joseph Conrad, “The Tale”, 1917 (short short story )
- Virginia Woolf, “The Mark on the Wall”, 1917 (short short story)
- Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Brodie, 1961 (short novel)
- Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea, 1966 (novel)
- Hanif Kureishi, "My Son the Fanatic", 1994 (short story)
Reading List:
- Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, 1847 (novel)
- E. M. Forster, Passage to India, 1924 (novel)
Poetry
William Wordsworth, “Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey” (1798), “Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802”;
P. B. Shelley, “Ode to the West Wind” (1819);
John Keats, “On first looking into Chapman’s Homer” (1816), “Ode to a Nightingale” (1819), “Ode on a Grecian Urn” (1820);
Lord Byron, “She Walks in Beauty” (1813), “On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year” (1824);
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “Sonnet 43” (1846);
Matthew Arnold, “Dover Beach” (1867);
G. M. Hopkins, “The Windhover” (1877);
Rudyard Kipling, “If—” (1895);
Thomas Hardy, “The Convergence of the Twain” (1912);
Thomas Stearns Eliot, “The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock” (1915);
William Butler Yeats, “Easter, 1916” (1921), “Sailing to Byzantium” (1928);
W. H. Auden, “As I Walked Out One Evening” (1940);
Dylan Thomas, “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” (1951);
Derek Walcott, “Love After Love” (1976), “The Season of Phantasmal Peace” (1981)
Bibliography
Andrew Sanders, Storia della letteratura inglese dal XIX secolo al postmoderno, a cura di Anna Anzi, Mondadori, Milano, 2000.
Marcello Pagnini (a cura di), Il Romanticismo, Il Mulino, Bologna 1986.
Gianni Cianci (a cura di), Il Modernismo, Il Mulino, Bologna.
Jack Stillinger (ed.), Twentieth century interpretations of Keats's Odes : a collection of critical essays, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1968
Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae, Yale University Press, 1990.
Richard Ambrosini, “Lo specchio come psiche in The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde di R. L. Stevenson”. In Agostino Lombardo (a cura di). Gioco di specchi: Saggi sull’uso letterario dell’immagine dello specchio. Bulzoni, Roma, 1999, pp. 271-87.
Helen Vendler, Our Secret Discipline, Oxford University Press, 2007.
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, "Three Women's Texts and a Critique of Imperialism", Inquiry, Vol. 12, No. 1(Autumn, 1985), pp.243-261.
Type of delivery of the course
Lectures in EnglishType of evaluation
A three-hour final written exam, which will test how well the students know the texts. There will also be a final conversation. teacher profile teaching materials
William Wordsworth, Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802 [online];
John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn [online];
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations [any English unabridged edition];
Amy Levy, A London Plane-tree, London in July, A March Day in London [online];
Oscar Wilde, Impression du Matin, Symphony in Yellow [online];
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray [any English unabridged edition];
Virginia Woolf, The London Scene [any English unabridged edition];
Sam Selvon, The Lonely Londoners [any English unabridged edition];
Doris Lessing, London Observed [any English unabridged edition];
Bernardine Evaristo, Hello Mum [any English unabridged edition].
Programme
This course provides a detailed analysis of some of the historical and cultural knots in English literature through the study of texts by some of the authors belonging to the British canon. The course will focus on topics, contexts and textual strategies with a view to underlining the literary representation of the city of London as a site for conflict, celebration, delusion and self-deception, utopia, creativity, etc. from the Nineteenth century to nowadays.Core Documentation
William Blake, London, The Chimney Sweeper (from Songs of Innocence and Songs od Experience) [online];William Wordsworth, Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802 [online];
John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn [online];
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations [any English unabridged edition];
Amy Levy, A London Plane-tree, London in July, A March Day in London [online];
Oscar Wilde, Impression du Matin, Symphony in Yellow [online];
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray [any English unabridged edition];
Virginia Woolf, The London Scene [any English unabridged edition];
Sam Selvon, The Lonely Londoners [any English unabridged edition];
Doris Lessing, London Observed [any English unabridged edition];
Bernardine Evaristo, Hello Mum [any English unabridged edition].
Type of delivery of the course
Lectures.Type of evaluation
In-class assessment and final oral exam for those who attend the course. Final oral exam only for those who do not attend the course. June/July exams: oral online exams (Microsoft Teams)