IN-DEPTH SEMINARS OF DISCIPLINARY AREA (LCSM) - MOD. 2

The English Studies program is part of the broader curriculum in Modern Languages, Cultures, and Societies, which encompasses a wide range of linguistic and cultural fields. These are structured to both highlight differences and specificities while promoting transdisciplinary perspectives. The curriculum integrates various critical approaches to literary and cultural traditions, ranging from textual analysis to philological-linguistic and historical-cultural analysis, employing diverse methodologies, including comparative and historical-linguistic approaches.

Doctoral students will be expected to identify and critically analyze, with theoretical awareness, the adaptive development of the fairy tale genre from structural-linguistic and historical-sociological perspectives (with particular attention to gender constructions), as well as from an interdisciplinary and interlinguistic viewpoint.

Knowledge and skills to be assessed during the selection process: a good understanding of theoretical and critical perspectives on adaptation, a solid knowledge of the historical and literary context of English literature, and an excellent command of the English language.

The course will examine the development of the fairy tale genre within English-language children's literature, from the 18th century to the present, with a particular focus on the relationship between 19th-century fairy tales and late 19th-century medicine; issues related to the word-image relationship in illustrated fairy tales; and narrative adaptations of Shakespearean plays for children that adopt/modify the structure of the fairy tale.

Cristina Bacchilega, Postmodernist Fairy Tales. Gender and Narrative Strategies, Pennsylvania University Press, 1999.
Cristina Bacchilega, Fairy Tales Transformed?: Twenty-First-Century Adaptations and the Politics of Wonder, Wayne State University Press, 2013.
Alessandro Cabiati “Blue Chambers, Bluebooks, and Contes Bleus: Gothic Terror and Female Deviance in Nineteenth-Century Adaptations of ‘Bluebeard’” Humanities 12, no. 4: 60 (2023). https://doi.org/10.3390/h12040060
Sujata Iyengar, Shakespeare and Adaptation Theory, London, Bloomsbury 2023.
Perry Nodelman, Words about Pictures: the Narrative Art of Children’s Picture Books, University of Georgia Press, 1990.
Maria Tatar, The Hard Facts of the Grimms’ Fairy Tales, Princeton, 2019.
Laura Tosi e Alessandro Cabiati (eds) Severed Limbs and Monstrous Appetites: (Re)Defining Fairy-Tale Horror from the Seventeenth Century to the Present, numero speciale di LITERATURE, vol. 3-4 , 2023.
Laura Tosi “I silenzi delle parole, la voce delle immagini: un percorso tra picturebooks anglosassoni”, QDS. QUADERNI DI DIDATTICA DELLA SCRITTURA, vol. 34, pp. 45-60, 2020.

The assessment of the learning of tools and methodologies will be carried out through the biannual evaluations scheduled for the PhD students currently enrolled in the program.

Interactive in-person seminars and lectures.

not present

This subject deals with topics related to the macro-area "Poverty and inequalities" and contributes to the achievement of one or more goals of U. N. Agenda for Sustainable Development