31146 - English Literature 2 (A-L)

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

Picturesque Voyages, Transatlantic Travels, and Oriental Encounters in Romantic and Victorian Narratives

From the eighteenth century through the Romantic period, there was a dramatic upsurge in the genre known as Voyages and Travels, a vast and highly heterogeneous branch of literature. During this time, an unprecedented number of travel narratives, both genuine and fictional, were published. This diverse and experimental genre reflects a growing curiosity about the world and explores not only how men and women of the period experienced travel, but also how travel writing enabled engagement with literary and aesthetic categories such as the sublime and the picturesque, as well as political issues including slavery and abolition, orientalism, and colonialism.

The reading list includes works by M. Wollstonecraft, A. Radcliffe, S.T. Coleridge, O. Equiano, H. More, Lord Byron, C. Brontë, R. Kipling and B. Stoker as key texts used to discuss the several kind of travel narrated between the Romantic and Vicotian period.

The course includes introductory lectures dedicated to the history of English literature from the Eighteenth century, the Romantic to the Victorian Period.

Readings/Bibliography

Extracts from the texts on the syllabus, along with additional material discussed during lectures, will be made available to students on the online platform Virtuale.

Primary texts:

• Picturesque Travel: M. Wollstonecraft, Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark; A. Radcliffe, The Romance of the Forest; The Mysteries of Udolpho;
• Slave narratives and Transatlantic Travel: Olaudah Equiano, The Intresting Narrative; Hannah More, "Slavery; a Poem"; S.T. Coleridge, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner";
• Orientalism and Empire: Lord Byron, "Turkish Tales"; R. Kipling, "The Mark of the Beast"; C. Brontë, Jane Eyre (selection); B. Stoker, Dracula (full novel).
  

Secondary reading - Reference only:

History of English Literature:

L. M. Crisafulli e K. Elam (a cura di), Manuale di letteratura e cultura inglese, Bologna, BUP, 2009.

English Editions:

• English Literature in Contex, ed. P. Poplawski (Cambridge UP 2008) Ch. 3 "Restoration and eighteenth Century"; Ch. 4 "The Romantic Period"; Ch. 5 "The Victorian Age".
  
• The Norton Anthology of English Literature, vol. II or The Oxford Anthology (sala consultazione - Biblioteca LLSM)
  
• The Broadview Anthology of British Literature, "The Age of Romanticism", second ed., Broadview Press 2010.
• The Cambridge History of English Literature, ed. J. Chandler, Cambridge UP 2009.

Critical Essays:

Three chapters (4 for those students who are not attending lectures) at your choice from the following list:

"Eighteenth-Century Travel Writing" by Nigel Leask and "Travel writing in the nineteenth century" by Carl Thompson in Travel Writing ed. by Nigel Leask and Nandini Das, Cambridge UP, 2019.

"Travel writing in the eighteenth century" and "Travel writing in the nineteenth century" by Tim Youngs in The Cambridge Introduction to Travel Writing, Cambridge UP, 1013.

E. A. Bohls, Women Travel Writers and the Language of Aesthetics, 1716-1818, , Cambridge UP 1999 (cap. su M. Wollostonecraft e cap. su Ann Radcliffe).

Serena Baiesi, “Romantic Women Writers and the Abolitionist Movement: The Economics of Freedom” in La Questione Romantica “Imperialismo/Colonialismo” n. 18/19, Liguori, Napoli 2008 (pp. 33-49).

T. Fulford and P.J. Kitson, "Romanticism and colonialism: texts, contexts, issues" in Romanticism and Colonialism. Writing and Empire, 1780-1830 (eds. T. Fulford and P.J. Kiston) Cambridge UP (1998).

Eric Williams, "The Goldern Age of the Slave System in Britain" in The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Jan., 1940), pp. 60-106

M. Ferguson, "British Women Writers and an Emerging Abolitionist Discourse" in The Eighteenth Century, vol. 33, n. 1, 1992.

Cohen-Vrignaud G. "Orientalism". In: Tuite C, ed. Byron in Context. Literature in Context. Cambridge University Press; 2019:93-100.

Susan L. Meyers, "Colonialism and the Figurative Strategy of Jane Eyre" in Victorian Studies 33.2 (1990).

Harish Trivedi, "Reading Kipling in India" in The Cambridge Companion to Rudyard Kipling, Edited by Howard J. Booth, Cambridge UP, 2011.

Sullivan ZT. "Kipling’s India" in Narratives of Empire: The Fictions of Rudyard Kipling. Cambridge University Press; 1993:1-26.

Prescott CE, Giorgio GA. VAMPIRIC AFFINITIES: MINA HARKER AND THE PARADOX OF FEMININITY IN BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA. Victorian Literature and Culture. 2005;33(2):487-515.

Stephen D. Arata, The Occidental Tourist: "Dracula" and the Anxiety of Reverse Colonization, Victorian Studies , Summer, 1990, Vol. 33, No. 4 (Summer, 1990), pp. 621-645.

Teaching methods

Lectures in English: from an introduction to the literary periods spanning the eighteenth century to the Victorian age, to close reading and critical commentary on the primary texts; supported by videos and film adaptations of literary works.

Assessment methods

The evaluation of the students' competencies and abilities acquired during the course consists in a written exam at the end of the course for those students who attended classes regularly as well as for those who do not attend classes.

The exam is split in two parts: the first part, lasting 40 minutes, will consist of short-answer and multiple-choice questions concerning the literary history and cultural context from the 18th to the 19th century; the second part, lasting 1 hour, will include open questions concerning the authors and texts covered during the course with also commentary on selected extracts.

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

Online resourses available for student online; film and videos show during lectures.

Office hours

See the website of Serena Baiesi