ENGLISH LITERATURE 2

This two-year course aims to perfect students’ skills and basic knowledge of English literature gained in the first year of the BA course in “Lingue, Civiltà e Scienze del Linguaggio” (Literary and Cultural Course). It will focus on a group of novels belonging to the Victorian and Edwardian Age providing students with major critical theories and methodologies, textual analysis as well as cultural-historical context.

1) to read, understand and translate novels and to relate them to their historical and cultural contexts; 2) to analyse critically a given text; 3) to make autonomous judgements; 4) to show in academic writing that you can think critically about the topics discussed and that you can back up your points with evidence.

Students must be fully proficient in English. They are required to have certified English proficiency at level B. They are also expected to be familiar with 19th and early twentieth century English literature (1901-1910).

Course title: The Language of Passion in Victorian and Edwardian Literature

Through a close reading of four novels, which explore the theme of love and passion, this course aims to illustrate the transition from High Victorianism to Modernism. While “Wuthering Heights”, a story of passionate love, but also revenge and death, looks back to the Romantic exaltation of feeling over reason and to a mystical union with nature, “Great Expectations” and especially “Tess of the d'Urbervilles” anticipate the late Victorian and modern novel in their narrative techniques and pessimistic vision of life. In “A Room with a View”, a voyage of self-discovery, the critique of Victorian values and of the repression of the middle-classes is expressed through irony, humour, and psychological analysis.

Bibliografia primaria:
E. Brontë, WUTHERING HEIGHTS (1847)
C. Dickens, GREAT EXPECTATIONS (1861)
T. Hardy, TESS OF THE D’URBEVILLES (1891)
E.M. Forster, A ROOM WITH A VIEW (1908)

Bibliografia secondaria:
Per un inquadramento storico-letterario sull’Età Vittoriana e sul Modernismo:

Storia della letteratura inglese, a cura di Paolo Bertinetti, vol. secondo, Torino, Einaudi, 2000, pp. 67-108; pp. 164-222;

Dal Vittorianesimo al Modernismo: la cultura letteraria inglese 1830-1870, a cura di F. Ruggeri, Roma: Carocci, 2003.

English Literature in Context, ed. by P. Poplawski, Cambridige: CUP, 2008. E’ richiesta la lettura dei seguenti capitoli “The Victorian Age” (pp. 403-96) e “Twentieth Century: Historical Overview” pp. 527-39.

Letture integrative per gli studenti non frequentanti:

R. Carter and J. McRae, The Routledge History of Literature in English, Britain and Ireland, London and New York: Routledge, 1997, pp. 271-294; pp. 289-294; pp. 310-316.

J. Barrell, “Geographies of Hardy’s Wessex” in Tess of the d'Urbervilles, New Casebooks, ed. by P. Widdowson, Houndsmill: Macmillan,1993, pp. 157-171.

F. Marucci, STORIA DELLA LETTERATURA INGLESE. Dal 1832 al 1870. Vol. III. Firenze: Le Lettere, 2003, pp. 77-112; pp. 236-45; pp. 554-73; 619-57.

F. Marucci, STORIA DELLA LETTERATURA INGLESE. Dal 1870 al 1921, Vol. IV. Firenze: Le Lettere, 2006, pp. 423-32; pp. 462-70.

F. Marucci, STORIA DELLA LETTERATURA INGLESE. Dal 1922 al 2000, Vol. V. Firenze: Le Lettere, 2011, pp. 147-63.

Due to the COVID-19 health emergency, the exam will be delivered remotely.
The final ORAL exam will cover all material from class and assigned readings. Students are expected to be proficient in understanding and critically analysing the texts given in the syllabus. In order to do so, when taking the exam, students are requested to have on hand the novels indicated in the primary sources. Levels of linguistic knowledge and of the ability to communicate will also be assessed.
The students must be aware that remote participation in examination is only temporary and that it has being prompted by the coronavirus pandemic.

Front lessons, class discussions, lectures by international scholars

Ideally, students should read the novels indicated in the syllabus before the beginning of the course in order to increase their participation in class discussions.

written