ENGLISH LITERATURE

The main objective of this course is to provide students with advanced knowledge in the fields of English-speaking literatures and cultures (critical theories and methodologies, textual analysis, and cultural-historical context). The course is part of the syllabus of EUROPEAN JOINT DEGREE IN ENGLISH AND AMERICAN STUDIES, and the competence achieved will be tested in the foreign universities where Joint Degree students spend a semester as part of the programme, in interaction with international students.

During this course, students will develop proficiency in modernist and postmodernist literature, while also acquiring competences in contemporary theoretical approaches to literary works including dystopian studies, post-apocalyptic studies, and ecocriticism. Students are encouraged to actively participate in classroom discussions in order to articulate and defend arguments, consider different viewpoints and textual interpretations, and evaluate evidence.
The analytic skills students have learnt to use in their BA course will be further developed to include knowledge of literary and cultural history, critical methodology, theory, and interdisciplinary studies. In addition, students will broaden their experience in autonomous work and in discussing the results of their own research.
The learning outcomes of the course are 1. development of knowledge and understanding of the literary texts and the historical period; 2. the skills to apply this knowledge and understanding to a variety of texts; 3. the ability to formulate judgements in analysing literary and cultural phenomena; 4. the development of advanced communication skills in English; 5. the development of learning skills.

Students must be fluent in both written and spoken English. They will be required to read modernist and postmodernist texts, understand lectures, participate in classroom discussions, write a 2,000-word essay, and take a final oral exam. Students are also expected to have a broad familiarity with twentieth-century English literature and its historical context.

Title: POETIC, DYSTOPIAN, POST-APOCALYPTIC WASTELANDS, 1922-2006

This course will investigate representations of wastelands in English and American literature between 1922 and 2006. It will focus on how three different literary genres – poetry, dystopian literature, and post-apocalyptic fiction – have imagined and portrayed lands of desolation and ruin, with a particular focus on the city of London. The wastelands analysed in this course are desolate places not only in a geographic but also in a psychological sense: they are the result of catastrophic events which marked the decay or destruction of modern civilization, leaving behind only memories of a lost world, remains of past languages, objects, emotions. The course will begin with a study of T.S. Eliot’s "The Waste Land" (1922), discussing the (post)apocalyptic imagery of the poem – the walking dead crossing London Bridge in a City of ruins – and poetry conceived as ‘fragments’ and ‘a heap of broken images’ of past literature and culture. We will then move on to George Orwell’s "Nineteen Eighty-Four" (1949), where dystopian London is an urban wasteland in the aftermath of nuclear warfare, and all that is left of a forbidden and forgotten past are broken household objects and fragments of nursery rhymes. The last work that will be studied is Cormac McCarthy "The Road" (2006), where the consequences of an unnamed ecological catastrophe can be seen not only in the barren landscape but also in the fragmented language that mirrors the physical and psychological desolation of a father and a son, the protagonists of the novel.

PRIMARY SOURCES (mandatory readings)
T.S. Eliot, THE WASTE LAND (edited by Michael North, a Norton Critical Edition, W.W. Norton, 2001) – available on Moodle
George Orwell, NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR (edited by John Bowen, OUP, 2021)
Cormac McCarthy, THE ROAD (Pan Macmillan, Picador Collection, 2022)

CONTEXT AND CRITICISM (mandatory readings)
Gabrielle Mcintire, ‘"The Waste Land" as Ecocritique’, in The Cambridge Companion to "The Waste Land", pp. 178-193 – available on Moodle
Gregory Claeys, ‘The Origins of Dystopia: Wells, Huxley and Orwell’, in The Cambridge Companion to Utopian Literature, pp. 107-131 – available on Moodle
Erik Jaccard, ‘Not Death, but Annihilation: Orwell’s "Nineteen Eighty-Four" and the Catastrophe of Englishness’, in Critical Insights, pp. 99-112 – available on Moodle
Greg Garrard, ‘Beginnings: Pollution’ and ‘Apocalypse’, in Ecocriticism, pp. 1-14, 85-107 – available on Moodle
James Berger, ‘Post-Apocalyptic Rhetorics: How to Speak after the End of Language’, in After the End: Representations of Post-Apocalypse, pp. 3-18 – available on Moodle

IMPORTANT: Most of the texts (primary sources, context and criticism) listed in this syllabus are available on Moodle. In addition to these, students are required to download and study articles and slides that will be made available on Moodle. On some occasions, students will be required to download materials IN ADVANCE and bring them to class. Non-attending students are required to contact Dr Cabiati at least 2 months before the date of the exam in order to be assigned additional reading.

Oral exam at the end of the course. The final oral exam will cover all issues included in assigned reading, lectures, and texts downloaded from the Moodle Platform. Students will be required to write a 2,000-word essay on a topic of choice related to the course, to be handed in one week before the oral exam. Essays will NOT be scored and will NOT count towards the final grade. In the first part of the oral exam, students will have to answer questions about their essays. In the second part of the exam, students will discuss issues covered in the course. Levels of linguistic knowledge and of the ability to communicate will also be assessed.

Front lectures and class discussions.

English

Class attendance is highly recommended. Students are warmly invited to read THE WASTE LAND before the beginning of the course. Non-attending students are required to contact Dr Cabiati at least 2 months before the date of the exam in order to be assigned additional reading.

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