Programme

Shaping and Reshaping Gender Roles in English Literature from the Elizabethan Age to Romanticism

This course examines the construction and transformation of gender roles in English literature from the Elizabethan age to Romanticism through a selection of dramatic, poetic, and narrative texts. Exploring the ways in which femininity and masculinity are defined, shaped, and challenged across different historical and cultural moments, the course analyses literary representations of gender in relation to changing conceptions of time, religious transformations, and shifting scientific paradigms through which bodies are interpreted, disciplined, and represented.

Core Documentation

Students are required to read the primary texts for the course, preferably in the editions listed below:

- Selection of sonnets by William Shakespeare from William Shakespeare, Sonetti, a cura di Alessandro Serpieri, BUR, 2010 edition or later (Italian edition with facing-page translation; the texts will be uploaded to Moodle).
- William Shakespeare, Macbeth, edited by Robert S. Miola, W.W. Norton, 2004.
- Selection of poems by John Donne and Andrew Marvell from The Metaphysical Poets, edited by Helen Gardner, Penguin Classics, 2006 edition or later (the texts will be uploaded to Moodle).
- John Milton, Paradise Lost, edited by Stephen Orgel and Jonathan Goldberg, Oxford University Press, 2008 edition or later (the selection of Books will be announced in class and uploaded to Moodle).
- Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders, edited by David Blewett, Penguin Classics, 1989 or later.
- Selection of poems by William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron and John Keats (the texts will be uploaded to Moodle).

Students must read the original English versions of these texts, using bilingual editions where available and necessary.

Reference Bibliography

Both attending and non-attending students must read the following critical texts: - Paul Poplawski (ed.), English Literature in Context, second edition, Cambridge University Press, 2017 (chapters 2, 3, 4, pp. 98-363). - Michael Schoenfeldt, “The Sonnets”, in The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare’s Poetry, edited by Patrick Cheney, Cambridge University Press, 2007, pp. 125-143 (available on Moodle). - Robert S. Miola, “Introduction”, in William Shakespeare, Macbeth, edited by Robert S. Miola, W.W. Norton, 2004, pp. vii-xxi (available on Moodle). - Janet Adelman, “Escaping the Matrix: The Construction of Masculinity in Macbeth”, in William Shakespeare, Macbeth, edited by Robert S. Miola, W.W. Norton, 2004, pp. 293-315 (available on Moodle). - Ilona Bell, “Gender Matters: The Women in Donne’s Poems”, in The Cambridge Companion to John Donne, edited by Achsah Guibbory, Cambridge University Press, 2006, pp. 201-216 (available on Moodle). - Donald M. Friedman, “Andrew Marvell”, in The Cambridge Companion to English Poetry, Donne to Marvell, edited by Thomas N. Corns, Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp. 275-303 (available on Moodle). - Diane K. Mccolley, “Milton and the Sexes”, in The Cambridge Companion to John Milton, edited by Dennis Danielson, Cambridge University Press, 1999, pp. 175-192 (available on Moodle). - Ellen Pollak, “Gender and Fiction in Moll Flanders and Roxana”, in The Cambridge Companion to Daniel Defoe, edited by John Richetti, Cambridge University Press, 2009, pp. 139-157 (available on Moodle). - David Blewett, “Introduction”, in Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders, edited by David Blewett, Penguin Classics, 1989, pp. 1-24 (available on Moodle). - Maureen N. McLane, Adriana Craciun, “Romantic Poetry, Sexuality, Gender”, in The Cambridge Companion to British Romantic Poetry, edited by James Chandler, Cambridge University Press, 2008, pp. 155-177 (available on Moodle).

Attendance

Attendance is not compulsory but strongly recommended.

Type of evaluation

Final oral examination to be held in person. There will be an optional mid-term assessment for attending students, to be held in person (the format will be explained in class and communicated also via Moodle).

Programme

This course explores the representation of the female condition in a selection of texts from Shakespeare to Jane Austen.Through the analysis of plays, novels, essays, and poems, written by male and female authors from the end of the Sixteenth century to the beginning of the Nineteenth, we will explore the ways in which women have been narrated, and their difficult condition, their voices, their predicament represented. We will watch a selection of film adaptations of some of the texts considered and will investigate what happens to a story when it travels across media.

Core Documentation

Primary texts (for all of them I have suggested a preferable edition - however for most of them I can provide the text in pdf)
William Shakespeare, King Lear (1605-1606) (any good edition with English-Italian parallel text, i.e. Garzanti o Mondadori); Sonnets (1609): 6, 20, 27, 28, 42, 130, 144 (text available in pdf).
Aphra Behn, The Rover (1677) (recommended edition: Oxford Students Texts, OUP 2007) (alternatively: text available in pdf).
Daniel Defoe, The Fortunate Mistress: Roxana (1724) (recommended edition: Oxford World's Classics) (alternatively: text available in pdf).
Eliza Haywood, Three Novellas (1726) (recommended edition: Michigan State University Press 1996).
Oliver Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer (1776) (recommended edition: Oxford Student Texts, OUP 2013).
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (selection of chapters) (1792) and A Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark (1796) (a selection of chapters) (texts available in pdf).
Jane Austen, Mansfield Park (1814) (recommended edition: Oxford World's Classics or Penguin Classics) (alternatively: text available in pdf).

Filmografia:
King Lear, dir. Gregory Doran (Royal Shakespeare Company), 2016.
She Stoops to Conquer, dir. Max-Stafford-Clark (Out of Joint/National Theatre Co-Production (2003).
Mansfield Park, dir. Patricia Rozema, 1999.

History of English Literature:
English Literature in Context, ed. by Paul Poplawski, Cambridge University Press, 2017 (this book must be bought)

Reference Bibliography

The secondary readings are available in pdf on the course's Teams Robert Matz, The Scandal of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, ELH, Vol 77, No. 2 (Summer 2010), pp. 477-508. Giorgio Melchiori, Shakespeare, pp. 3-25 e 484-499. Dall’edizione Oxford Students Text di "The Rover", ed. by Diane Maybank (OUP 2017): pp. 1-12 e pp. 169-206. Anita Pacheco, Rape and the Female Subject in Aphra Behn’s “The Rover”, ELH, Vol. 65, No. 2 (Summer 1998), pp. 323-345. Terry Castle, '“Amy, Who Knew My Disease”: A Psychosexual Pattern in Defoe’s Roxana', ELH, Vol. 46, No. 1 (Spring, 1979), pp. 81-96. Ruth Abbey, "Are Women Human?" In "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman", ed by E. Hunt Botting (Yale UP 2014), pp. 229-245; Eileen Hunt Botting, "The Personal is Political", in "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman", ed by E. Hunt Botting (Yale UP 2014), pp. 261-279; Virginia Sapiro, "Reading Mary Wollstonecraft in Time", in "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman", ed by E. Hunt Botting (Yale UP 2014), pp. 280-288. Kathryn Sutherland, "Introduction", in J. Austen, "Mansfield Park", Penguin Classics 2014, pp. VII-XXXV. Rachel Bowlby, A Child of Own’s One, Oxford University Press 2013, chapter on Mansfield Park. Kathryn Sutherland, "Introduction", in J. Austen, Mansfield Park, Penguin Classics 2014, pp. VII-XXXV. Carlotta Farese, “Genre-Bending at Mansfiekd Park: The Remediation of Austen’s Female Characters Across Novel, Theatre and Film”, Textus. English studies in Italy, XXX (2017) N.3, pp. 113-128.

Type of delivery of the course

Lectures will be held on campus, unless anti-Covid measures require online teaching.The course will be taught through a combination of lectures and activities involving group discussion. We will make use of audiovisual material. Attendance is highly recommended. Class participation will be one of the criteria for the final evaluation.

Attendance

Attendance is highly recommended

Type of evaluation

The exam, in oral form, will take place at the end of the course. During the course, however, students will be temporarily evaluated through learning activities (short presentations or critical-creative response to chosen texts).