ENGLISH LITERATURE 1

The course is linked to the teaching of the English language. It aims to improve the students' linguistic skills introducing them to the knowledge and understanding of various texts (prose and poetic texts) ranging from Derek Walcott to John Coetzee, and discussing some of the main post-colonial theory books. In particular, it aims to:
1) Allow students to gain the ability to read, translate and understand a literary text in its context, and to critically comment on it;
2) Allow them to use the methodologies of textual analysis appropriate to the proposed texts and literary genres;
3) Allow them to communicate effective observations derived from the texts and historical-cultural periods dealt with in class

A finer competence with English language, especially that one used in contemporary literary texts. Students will be guided to critically read and listen to and comment various literary texts and specific theory books in order to become aware of the causes and consequences of colonialism and neo-colonialism which have condemned many Third World countries to poverty and decadence. The module will be focussed on travels, globalization, land appropriation, and Third World, presenting some of the key events linked with the last decades in some post-colonial parts of the world, including a discussion about geographical discoveries, human rights, peace and co-existence, privatization of land, destruction of wild areas, exile, etc.

None but a reasonable ability to read texts in the English language and about the history of some post-colonial countries.

This module will offer a general overview on the metaphor of the island in literature. The island is generally linked with a distant dream, or a geographical dimension that informs the reader about those impossible expectations and desires hidden or half-hidden in everyone’s consciousness. Who has never desired to leave for a distant island and fly from the clangour of daily life? Yet, it’s on the island that we can live out a contradictory existence made up of attraction and anxiety, including, in literature, the magic atmosphere contained in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, or the struggle for survival in Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, or the ironic travels to imaginary islands in Swift’s Gulliver Travels, the timeless childhood of Barrie’s Peter Pan, the adventures in the island of Coetzee’s Susan Barton, and the description of the corrupted, post-colonial and neo-colonised West Indies by Derek Walcott and Jamaica Kincaid.
Special attention will be paid to the following works: William Shakespeare, The Tempest; Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe; JM Cotezee’s Foe; Derek Walcott’s The Schooner Flight; Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place.

CANON READINGS/ TESTI ISTITUZIONALI

- WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, La tempesta, trad. di G.S. Gargano, Sansoni, 1964 (o qualsiasi altra edizione e traduzione). In italiano /Read this book in Italian.
Leggere le pagine critiche di:
FRANCES A. YATES, Gli ultimi drammi di Shakespeare (Torino, Einaudi, 1979), pp. 81-101. Caricato sui Materiali ISA in PDF. In alternativa in inglese (In English): http://www.unz.org/Pub/Encounter-1975apr-00014
- DANIEL DEFOE, Robinson Crusoe, Harmondsworth: Penguin (o qualsiasi altra edizione in lingua originale). In italiano: Robinson Crusoe, trad. di Oriana Previtali, Milano: Mondadori, 2003; oppure: Le avventure di Robinson Crusoe, trad. di Antonio Meo e Giuseppe Sertoli, Torino: Einaudi, 1998. In inglese (In English): la parte relativa alla partenza (“But I was hurried on…”) fino a THE JOURNAL (escluso), (28 pagine in totale). Leggere le pagine critiche di:
GIUSEPPE SERTOLI, “Introduzione” a Le avventure di Robinson Crusoe (Torino: Einaudi, 1998), pp. v-xl. In alternativa, in inglese (In English): MAXIMILLIAN E. NOVAK, Realism, Myth and History in Defoe’s Fiction (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1983), pp. 23-46.

THEORY BOOKS/ LIBRI TEORICI **
1. ANTONIO PRETE, Trattato della lontananza (Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 2008), pp. 116-132.
2. GILLES DELEUZE, L’isola e altri scritti (Torino: Einaudi, 2007), parte introduttiva sull’isola, pp. 3-9.
3. ÉDOUARD GLISSANT, Poetica del diverso (Roma: Meltemi, 1998), pp. 11-26. In alternativa (In English): http://sideroom.org/o/wp-content/uploads/edouard-glissant-poetics-of-relation-1.pdf
4. HOMI BHABHA, “Of Mimicry and Man”, in The Location of Culture(London: Routledge, 1994), pp. 85-92.
5. AIMé CESAIRE, Discourse on Colonialism, Monthly Review Press, 1955.
** I quattro testi teorici sono caricati sui materiali ISA in PDF.


PRIMARY TEXTS/ TESTI PRIMARI *
1. JAMAICA KINCAID, A Small Place, 1988. (In italiano: Un posto piccolo, Milano: Adelphi, 2000). (Read the whole book in English).
2. DEREK WALCOTT, “The Schooner Flight”. (Read this long poem in English).
3. J.M. COETZEE, Foe, Harmondsworth: Penguin (o qualsiasi altra edizione in lingua originale). (In italiano: Foe, trad. di Gianni Pilone Colombo, Milano: Rizzoli, 1987). (Read the first chapter in English, and the whole book in Italian).

* I tre testi in inglese sono caricati sui materiali ISA in PDF.

SECONDARY SOURCES ON COETZEE, KINCAID, and WALCOTT
1. MOIRA FERGUSON, Jamaica Kincaid: Where the Land Meets the Body, (Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia, 1994), pp. 77-106.
2. PAUL BRESLIN, “Nobody’s Nation. Reading Derek Walcott” (The University of Chicago Press, 2001): cap. 7 su “The Schooner Flight”.
 MARCO FAZZINI, “Shabine’s Voyage through Language and History in Derek Walcott’s ‘The Schooner Flight’”, in Maria Renata Dolce e Antonella Riem Natale, eds., Bernard Hickey: A Roving Cultural Ambassador: Essays in His Memory (Udine: Forum, 2009, pp. 127-133).
Caricati sui materiali ISA in PDF.
3. DICK PENNER, Countries of the Mind: The Fiction of J.M. Coetzee (New York: Greenwood Press, 1989), pp. 113-129.

Oral exam. Starting from the reading and translation into Italian of a passage from one of the primary texts (chosen by the lecturer), the exam will be devoted to evaluating the student's capacity to comment on the passage/s, in a larger discourse involving the whole novel/poem, other passages from the same work or from the other texts on the syllabus, and in the light of the problematical issues (related to the history and the literary and cultural questions of the period) discussed in class or in the critical set texts.

Lectures, with class discussions. DVDs, CDs, and possible invited guests from various parts of the world.

Italian

oral