CINEMA IN ENGLISH

Upon successful completion of this course, students will hopefully learn to critically read novels and films, as well as to write a paper with coherent arguments and analytic interpretation. They will also be encouraged to draw connections between their own experiences of cinema and film theory. In addition, at the end of this course students should have attained an awareness of the Victorian Age’s most relevant cultural and social contexts, of the problems of gender and class, and finally of the Victorian Age’s legacy to contemporary culture and film.
Students are also encouraged to actively participate in classroom discussions in order to articulate and defend positions, consider different points of view, and evaluate evidence.
This English-taught course is part of the JOINT DEGREE IN ENGLISH AND AMERICAN STUDIES, an international educational programme, which offers motivated students the opportunity to attend some courses at a foreign partner university.

Upon successful completion of this course, students are expected to

• provide an introduction and overview to the Victorian era and the Victorian novel;
• explain and define “Victorianism” and its social-historical context;
• explain and describe the major conventions of the Victorian novel;
• identify the major forms of the Victorian novel;
• discuss the problems of gender, class and empire reflected in the Victorian Novel; and
• identify the ways in which scientific discovery and political thought influenced the Victorian Nove

Students are required to possess a good degree of proficiency in both written and spoken English.
They are also expected to have some familiarity with the Victorian Age as well as with the core stylistic features of Postmodernism

Title: "The Representation of Women in Victorian Fiction"

This module deals with the phenomenon of film adaptation of nineteenth
and twentieth century literary classics. Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady, and John Fowles’s The French Lieutenant's Woman are characterised by an equally pervasive emphasis on the quest for romantic love, personal freedom and self-fulfilment.
After an introductory unit designed to investigate the main theories and methods of cinematic adaptation, this module will focus on a close reading and detailed analysis of the three novels, exploring in particular prevailing views on women, class prejudice and rigid social stratification in relation to gender, sexual politics, and marriage. By considering Reisz’s and Pinter’s superb adaptation of Fowles’s historiographic meta-fiction –the novel is set in the years 1867 to 1869 – other issues such as self-reflexive writing, authorial omniscience, open-endedness, postmodernist theory and practice will be also investigated.

Novels
Charlotte Brontë, JANE EYRE (1847)
Henry James, THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY (1881)
John Fowles, THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT’S WOMAN (1969)

FILMS
Cary Fukunaga, JANE EYRE (2011)
Jane Campion, THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY (1996)
Karel Reisz, THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT’S WOMAN (1981)

Secondary Readings:

ADAPTATIONS: FROM TEXT TO SCREEN, SCREEN TO TEXT, ed. by D. Cartmell and I. Whelehan, London: New York, Routledge, 1999, pp. 1-28.

JANE EYRE, New Casebook, ed. Heather Glen, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997, pp. 68-91; 168-195.

M. Bell, “Isabel Archer and the Affronting of Plot”, in MEANING IN HENRY JAMES, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, pp. 80-122.

J. Acheson, JOHN FOWLES, London: Macmillan, 1998, pp.

P. Cooper, THE FICTIONS OF JOHN FOWLES, Ottawa, Paris: University of Ottawa Press, 1991, pp. 103-141.

S. Loveday, THE ROMANCES OF JOHN FOWLES London: Macmillan, 1985, pp. 48-81.


Additional readings for non-attendant students:

CHARLOTTE BRONTE’S JANE EYRE, A Casebook, ed. E.B. Michie, Oxford: OUP, 2006, pp. 3- 22 (introduction).

NEW ESSAYS ON THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY, ed. J. Porte, Cambridge: CUP, 1990, pp. 1-27 (introduction) plus an essay of your choice.

S. Loveday, THE ROMANCES OF JOHN FOWLES London,: Macmillan, 1985, pp. 1-10.

THE OXFORD COMPANION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE, ed. M. Drabble, Oxford: OUP, pp. 133-134 (C. Bronte); p. 503 (H. James); p. 780 (The Portrait of a Lady), pp. 364-365 (J. Fowles).

B. Nicol, THE CAMBRIDGE INTRODUCTION TO POSTMODERNISM, Cambridge: CUP, 2012, pp. 1-12; pp. 105-112.

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 exams, 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 lectures accompanied by screening of the films indicated in the above bibliography.
The course is taught in English

English

Class attendance is not mandatory but is highly recommended
As far as the exam is concerned, make sure that your answers are structured logically, that you write clearly and legibly, paying attention to grammar, spelling and punctuation. The level of linguistic knowledge will be also part of the assessment.

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