ENGLISH LITERATURE 1

The course, as part of the LCSL degree course, introduces students to the knowledge of the literary and cultural heritage of English-speaking countries, and will provide the students with skills in the thematic and stylistic analysis of selected literary texts.

The course will introduce students to some key literary, artistic, and cultural phenomena, and will underline their relevance for an analysis of the contemporary world. Students will enhance their skills in cultural and literary analysis as well as reading and translation skills. They will be able to relate texts to their historical and cultural contexts and communicate their comments and critical reflections on them with appropriate language.

B2 level in The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages.

Titolo: "Hanging in with Jane Austen"

We will enjoy the company of Jane Austen's novel *Mansfield Park* to interrogate the meaning of literature for our world and our times of crisis. We will talk about history and memory, empathy and identification, narratology and style, economies and ecologies, ethics and slavery, social and family ties, love and friendship, screens and pages, and the human brain. And about something else, which we will find out together. Like *Mansfield's Park*'s characters, at some point we will discuss Shakespeare and read *The Merchant of Venice*. We will finally ask ourselves if reading literature can make us better interpreters of our time, of ourselves and others.

Jane Austen, MANSFIELD PARK, Penguin, 2003.
William Shakespeare, IL MERCANTE DI VENEZIA, Marsilio, 2016 (or any other critical edition approved by instructor).
Jonathan Bate, ENGLISH LITERATURE. A VERY SHORT INTRODUCTION, Oxford University Press, 2015.
Critical essays available on the Moodle platform

Students will be tested with four questions on the issues discussed in assigned reading and lectures. As part of the written exam, they will be asked to translate, analyze and evaluate an excerpt from *Mansfield Park*. In this written exam they will have to prove that they have acquired a good knowledge of the cultural and historical contexts of the assigned texts, and that they have developed a basic ability to analyze, evaluate, and form autonomous judgments on the texts discussed.

Class lectures, with multimedia materials and materials on Moodle (subject to change according to the accessibility options during the first semester)

Italian

In case the university is not fully accessible during the first semester, the class will take place in a blended or online format with no substantial changes to the programme.

written

This subject deals with topics related to the macro-area "Human capital, health, education" and contributes to the achievement of one or more goals of U. N. Agenda for Sustainable Development