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.

We will be travelling in the company of a 20th-century classic (Conrad) and of a living author (Ghosh) to interrogate the meaning of (English) literature in our time of global environmental crisis. We will talk about history and memory, travel and landscape, colonialism and imperialsm, anthropocene and extractivism, economies and ecologies, ethics and slavery, social and family ties, love and friendship, empathy and identification, narratology and style, readers and interpretations. And about something else, which we will find out together. At some point we will turn to Shakespeare and read some of the same themes in *The Tempest*. We will finally ask ourselves if reading literature can make us better interpreters of our time, of ourselves and others.

Joseph Conrad, HEART OF DARKNESS, Penguin, 2007
Amitav Ghosh, GUN ISLAND, John Murray, 2019
William Shakespeare, LA TEMPESTA, any edition (recommended: Rizzoli, 2006 or Marsilio, 2006)
Andrea Bernardelli, CHE COS'È LA NARRAZIONE?, Carocci, 2020

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 short excerpt from the two main texts. 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 "Climate change and energy" and contributes to the achievement of one or more goals of U. N. Agenda for Sustainable Development