SOCIETA' E CULTURE DI LINGUA INGLESE

L’insegnamento fa parte degli insegnamenti caratterizzanti le Lingue insegnate nel Corso di Laurea in Lingue, Civiltà e Scienze del Linguaggio e ha lo scopo di arricchire la conoscenza del patrimonio linguistico, letterario e culturale della Gran Bretagna con la conoscenza delle principali caratteristiche della sua storia e della sua cultura sociale e politica, allargando ulteriormente, attraverso la lettura di testi nella lingua originale, la padronanza lessicale della lingua inglese.

Il corso si propone di approfondire, sulla base di letture di classici e di testi critici, le specificità e le peculiarità della storia e della cultura sociale e politica britannica, e le loro evoluzioni storiche nel più vasto panorama della storia europea.
Gli studenti svilupperanno le loro capacità critiche di analisi di tali fenomeni, e la coscienza delle rivelanti questioni sociali, scientifiche o etiche in essi implicate. Attraverso l’analisi dei testi in programma si consoliderà la loro capacità di elaborazione critica, formazione e argomentazione del giudizio in un linguaggio insieme specifico e comunicativo, e in una prospettiva comparativa che coinvolga la loro conoscenza ed esperienza della storia e della cultura nazionale italiana.

A very good knowledge of the English language

"The representation of the metropolis in the English culture and literature in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries"
The module will discuss the ways in which literati responded to the energetic, rumbustious and anarchic development of the modern metropolis in Great Britain (i.e. London, but not only) from the early eighteenth century, when London emerged as the new, great city of international commerce through the nineteenth century, when the Industrial revolution changed the shape of rural England into a metropolitan society based on the rise of industrial sites and large built-up areas, to the early twentieth century when the city mirrored the modern condition of individuals as mass men lost in the crowd of people and in the confusion of sounds, shapes, and the several stimulations that the urban environment produced.
Topics analysed in the module will include the city as a space of the imagination and representation; the city as stimulation on the writers' imagination as proxy of the city dweller (blasé, flaneur, Mass-Mensch [mob], consumer, etc.); experience as story: the city landscape as topography of the mind; the city and the construction of identity. Through a variety of texts, students will be confronted with the emergence of London from peripheral European capital to global cosmopolis.
We will read this development as part of the formation of the modern conscience through the classic interpretations given by Charles Baudelaire, Georg Simmel, Walter Benjamin, Henri Lefevbre and other thinkers.

Primary texts:-
- John Gay, "Trivia, or the Art of Walking through the Streets of London" (see moodle materials)
- Jonathan Swift, "Description of a City Shower" (see moodle materials)
- William Blake, "London" (see moodle materials)
- William Wordsworth, "Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802" (see moodle materials)
- Selected passages from Charles Dickens's novels (see moodle materials: "Charles Dickens and the city of London: An anthology" )

Criticism:
- chapters 7 and 8 from Roy Porter, "London: A Social History", Penguin, 1996 (BALI EH POR/Lon ; BAUM 942.1 PORTR)
- chapters 7 & 8 from Lawrence Manley (ed.), "The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of London", Cambridge UP, 2011 (BALI)
- essay: F. Gregori, "The "Audacious" Art of Walking: The Metropolis and the Proto-Flaneur in John Gay's 'Trivia' " (see moodle materials: Essay on 'Trivia')

Written examination.

The exam will comprise:
A. 3 questions with open answers on the critical readings on the history of London, the social and cultural meanings of the metropolis, and the relationship between the urban environment and literature,including various viewpoints on the metropolitan culture given by the sociologists, philosophers and urbanists that will be discussed in class ("Criticism" in the programme) (up to 15 marks);
B. a one-to-two page essay that contextualises literary passages chosen from the works in the programme ("Primary texts") within the social, cultural and political development of the urban world (up to 15 marks).
The examination will be in English. Students will be allowed to use a monolingual dictionary of English; no other dictionaries, books, nor tablets, smartphones etc. will be allowed during the exam.

Students will be informed by the teacher, in class and through announcements on his unive webpage, if the covid emergency obliges them to sit it as oral exam.

Front lectures, seminars, presentations.

Non attending students are requested to contact the teacher for supplementary readings, which they may find in the moodle materials (signalled as "for non attending students").

Students who do not participate to lessons (either in class or online) are non-attending students. Students who simply watch the panopto videos and do not interact in class are non-attending students.

orale

Questo insegnamento tratta argomenti connessi alla macroarea "Città, infrastrutture e capitale sociale" e concorre alla realizzazione dei relativi obiettivi ONU dell'Agenda 2030 per lo Sviluppo Sostenibile