31146 - English Literature 2 (M-Z)

Learning outcomes

At the end of the course students will be acquainted with the lineaments of English literary history. They will be able to read, understand and translate texts from English into Italian, and to deal with some basic critical methods and tools, in order to elaborate comments and critical opinions on the literary texts read during the course.

Course contents

Romantic Literature in Context: Poetry, Novel and Drama
The module will give students a clear sense of how the Romantic period fits into the longer history of English literature, attending both to the most well-known writers of the time and also to some who are less familiar. It will focus on the historical period between the French Revolution (1789) and the Great Reform Act (1832), drawing out themes that are relevant to the literature, but will also look back to the eighteenth century and forward to the early Victorian period. Attention will be paid to the idea of Romanticism as a movement, and this will be differentiated from the period as a whole. Literature from a wide variety of genres will be introduced including some or all of the following: the ballad, the Gothic novel, autobiographical poetry and prose, the gothic novel, the novel of manners, and the drama. Themes may include nature, the sublime, the city, addiction, slavery, political reform, Scottish Romanticism, the supernatural, religion, the supernatural and consumer literature.

The course includes two parts:

A) English History, Literature and Culture from the Eighteenth to the Nineteenth century.

B) Readings from the following authors: William Blake, Anna Laetitia Barbauld, William Wordsworth, Dorothy Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, John Keats, G.M. Lewis and Letitia Elizabeth Landon.

Readings/Bibliography

Readings (all extracts are included in "Materiale Didattico on-line")

E. Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry upon the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) - extracts

W. Gilpin, Three Essays on Picturesque Beauty (1792) - extracts

A. Radcliffe, extracts from The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)

Poetry:

W. Blake, Visions of the Daughters of Albion

C. Smith, extracts from Elegiac Sonnets and from Beachy Head

A.L. Barbauld, extracts from “Epistle to W. Wilberforce”; “The Mouse Petition”

W. Wordsworth, “Tintern Abbey”; “Composed on Westminster Bridge”; extracts from Prelude (Book VI; Book IX)

D. Wordsworth, “Floating Island”; “A Winter's Ramble in Grasmere Vale”; extracts from Journals

P.B.Shelley, “Mont Blanc”, extracts from The Defence of Poetry

J. Keats, “La belle Dame Sans Mercie”; extracts from Lamia

L.E. Landon, extracts "The Improvisatrice"

Novels: (1 novel at your choice)

Jane Austen, Emma (1815)

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818)

Teatro : (1 play at your choice)

M. Lewis, The Castle Spectre (1797)

Lord Byron, Manfred (1817)

Anthologies and General Reference:

L. M. Crisafulli e K. Elam (a cura di), Manuale di letteratura e cultura inglese, Bologna, BUP, 2009 (Cap. Il Settecento; Romanticismo e I Vittoriani)

Antologia delle Poetesse Romantiche Inglesi, a cura di L. M. Crisafulli (2 vols.), Carocci 2003 (poesie in traduzione e schede bio-bibliografiche solo delle potesse scelte e delle poesie incluse nel corso)

The Norton Anthology of English Literature (Vol. II) (per i poeti inclusi nel corso)

The Broadview Anthology of British Literature, "The Age of Romanticism", second ed., Broadview Press 2010. (general reference)

The Cambridge History of English Literature, ed. J. Chandler, Cambridge UP 2009. (general reference)

D. Looser, The Cambridge Companion to Women's Writing in the Romantic Period, Cambridge UP 2015. (general reference)

References:

· “Dipingere il paesaggio con le parole: esercizi di tecnica pre-cinematografica” in Paesaggi e misteri. Riscoprire Ann Radcliffe, B. Battaglia, Liguori, 2007.

· “The picturesque and the female sublime in Ann Radcliffe's Mysteries of Udolpho” in Women Travel Writers and the Language of Aesthetics, 1716-1818, E. A. Bohls, Cambridge UP 1999.

. Serena Baiesi, Letitia Elizabeth Landon: The Adventures of a Literary Genius, P.Lang 2009.

NOVEL: 

M. Shelley:

· “Aesthetics, gender, and empire in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein” in Women Travel Writers and the Language of Aesthetics, 1716-1818, E. A. Bohls, Cambridge UP 1999.

· “Making a ‘monster': an introduction to Frankenstein” in Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters by Anne K. Mellor, Methuen, 1988.

· “ ‘My Hideous Progeny': The Lady and the Monster” by M. Poovey, from The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer, Chicago UP 1984 (pp. 121-131).

· The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley, ed. Ester Shor, Cambridge UP

Jane Austen:

B.Battaglia, La Zitella Illiterata.Parodia e ironia nei romanzi di Jane Austen, seconda edizione, Napoli: Liguori 2008.

M.Butler, Jane Austen and the War of Ideas, Oxford: Claredon Press 1975.

E.Copeland and J. McMster, The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen, Cambridge: Cambridge UP 1997.

C.Johnson, Jane Austen: Women, Politics and the Novel, Chicago: U. of Chicago Press 1988.

D. Looser, Jane Austen and Discourses of Feminism, Palgrave 1995.

DRAMA:

M.G.Lewis:

· Jeffrey N. Cox, ed., Six Gothic Dramas (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1992)

· D.Saglia e G.Silvani (a cura di), Il teatro della paura: scenari gotici del romanticismo europeo, Bulzoni 2005 (saggio di G.Silvani: p. 77).

Lord Byron:

· Il Manfredi di Lordy Byron, a cura di G. Galigani, Firenze UP, 2003 (CD-rom).

· “Byron and the Meaning of Manfred”, S.M. Sperry, Criticism, Vol. 16, No. 3, Summer 1974, pp. 189-202.

Teaching methods

Frontal lessons in English: introduction of the literary period from the eighteenth century to the Victorian age; reading and analysis of the primary sources by English writers.

Assessment methods

The evaluation of the students' competencies and abilities acquired during the course consists in a written work at the end of the course for those students who attended classes regularly. For those who do not attend classes, the exam consists in an oral examination.

The written test is divided into two parts: the first will be made of multiple choice and short open questions concerning the literary history of the period from the Eighteenth century to the Victorian period; the second part will refer to the specific reading list of the syllabus.

For those students who will not take the written test, the exam will consist in an oral interview. This oral interview has the aim of evaluating the critical and methodological ability of the students in relating literary history, critical approach to texts and authors analysed during classes. The student must demonstrate an appropriate knowledge of the literary history from the Eighteenth century to the Victorian period in order to carry out the exam with the second part, which consists in the analysis of a given text and its critical contextualization.

Those students,who are able to demonstrate a wide and systematic understanding of the issues covered during classes, are able to use these critically and who master the field-specific language of the discipline will be given a mark of excellence. Those students who demonstrate a mnemonic knowledge of the subject with a more superficial analytical ability and ability to synthesize, a correct command of the language but not always appropriate, will be given a satisfactory mark. A superficial knowledge and understanding of the material, a scarce analytical and expressive ability that is not always appropriate will be rewarded with a ‘pass' mark. Students who demonstrate gaps in their knowledge of the subject matter, inappropriate language use, lack of familiarity with the literature in the program bibliography will not be given a pass mark.

Teaching tools

Frontal lectures with power point projections and dvd.

Office hours

See the website of Serena Baiesi