54705 - English Literature 3

Learning outcomes

Upon completing this course students will have acquired an in-depth knowledge of the history of English literature. They will have obtained critical insight into a selection of literary works and will be capable of evaluating their literary qualities, analysing them with the help of precise critical metholodogies. They will have acquired the theoretical tools they need to recognise the formal, thematic and stylistic components of the works included in the syllabus, relating them to their historical and cultural contexts. They will be able to discuss, translate and relate the contents of these works from a linguistic, historical and philological viewpoint.

Course contents

Criminal and Detective Minds

This course will explore the 19th- and 20th-century development of crime fiction, with a double focus on the subgenres of detective fiction and of the psychological thriller, which flourished in relation to the relevance psychoanalysis acquired as an interpretative paradigm of the human. Its aim is to illustrate the complexity of a genre that was reductively considered in the past as structurally formulaic and critically uninteresting, but which has recently obtained increasing attention and recognition as a significant literary phenomenon.

Contemporary critics have reassessed the normative view of this genre – which crystallised in the so-called ‘Golden Age’ of detective fiction, the interwar years, the age of Agatha Christie, when the ‘clue-puzzle’ formula, based on a skilful use of clues and on the ‘fair play’ principle, asserted itself – opting for a more descriptive and inclusive approach. This change of perspective is testified to by the wide currency a critical term such as crime fiction has now acquired in contrast with the traditional definition of detective fiction. As we can see, the weight is no longer on the investigative agent, but on the transgression of social norms. Needless to say, this conceptual shift reflects the central role Gothic elements play in the collective imagination, notably in relation to the development of the psycho-thriller, with its emphasis on ‘criminal minds’.

Rejecting the stereotyped view that this genre is identified solely by the focus on clues and the disciplinary presence of a detective, critics have reassessed its complex history. They have underlined its debt to the Gothic tradition, and have explored the relation between interweaving subgenres such as 19th century sensation fiction, detective fiction proper, the hardboiled, the noir and neo-noir, the thriller and its many variants, the police procedural and postmodern anti-detective fiction, to name but a few. As we can see, crime fiction is incessantly metamorphosing. Moreover, in the course of the 20th century this galaxy of subgenres has been characterised by processes of both remediation and cross-fertilisation with the result that films and tv series now play a major role in shaping the imagination of the reading public.

This cross-media genre will be explored as a ‘field of tension’ in order to study the changing status of both detection/detectives (due to the development of forensic science) and of crime/criminals (due to the continuous reshaping of laws and social norms). We will investigate the interplay between aspects of the detective such as mind and body (thinking machines versus vulnerable detectives), intellect and emotions (how do these apparently opposed dimensions concur to the personality of fallible and infallible detectives?). We will also utilise the critical category of gender to investigate authorial issues and characterisation.

Readings/Bibliography

Primary sources

E.A. Poe, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841)

E.A. Poe, “The Tell-Tale Heart” (1843)

William Wilkie Collins, “The Diary of Anne Rodway” (1856)

A.C. Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902)

Ngaio Marsh, Death and the Dancing Footman (1941)

Robert Bloch, Psycho (1959)

Emma Healey, Elizabeth is Missing (2019)

The course will include the viewing and discussion of films.

Critical sources

Ascari, Maurizio, A Counter-History of Crime Fiction, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007 (paperback edition 2009), pp. 1-90; 110-155.

-----, “Counterhistories and Prehistories”, in The Routledge Companion to Crime Fiction, eds Janice Allan, Jesper Gulddal, Stewart King and Andrew Pepper, London and New York, Routledge, 2020, pp. 22-30.

Nieto García, Jesús M., “Robert Bloch through the Looking Glass: Psycho, Doubles and Narrative Technique”, in Peeping Through the Holes: Twenty-First Century Essays on Psycho, edited by Eugenio M. Olivares-Merino and Julio A. Olivares Merino, Newcastle Upon Tyne, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013, pp. 51-66.

Oak Taylor-Ide, Jesse, “Ritual and the Liminality of Sherlock Holmes in The Sign of Four and The Hound of the Baskervilles”, in English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920, 48.1 (2005), pp. 55-70.

Harris, Marla, “The Case of the Missing Memory: Dementia and the Fictional Detective”, CLUES: A Journal of Detection, 37.1 (Spring 2019), pp. 51-60.

Werner, James V., “The Detective Gaze: Edgar A. Poe, the Flaneur and the Physiognomy of Crime”, in American Transcendental Quarterly, 15.1 (March 2001), pp. 5-21.

Literary history

Students will be required to prove their knowledge of the main tendencies of twentieth century English literature. Reference text: Lilla Maria Crisafulli e Keir Elam, Manuale di letteratura e cultura inglese, Bologna: Bononia University Press, 2009, pp. 327-70 (Il Novecento: Introduzione; Modernisti e Antimodernisti; Il romanzo); 385-94 (Il teatro di Samuel Beckett); 463-92 (Letteratura, nazionalità e regionalismo). This does not apply to Erasmus students.

Non-attending students

Non-attending students are not required to study any additional literary/critical texts. Should they feel the need to do so, they can contact the teacher.

Teaching methods

In compliance with the University guidelines, this course will be taught on-site  and will include

1) face to face classes, aiming to provide participants with the critical tools they need to interrogate and understand literary texts, both in terms of linguistic analysis and of historical/cultural contexts;

2) seminars in which students will discuss literary texts in an informal context;

3) the viewing and discussion of films.

Assessment methods

Students will have to take a 25-minute oral exam in English, which will be divided into two parts. The first part will focus on 20th century English literature, while the second will aim to evaluate the students' critical and methodological skills. In order to assess these skills, students will be invited to discuss the literary and critical texts that will have been presented during the course.

NB: In order to take this exam, students who are registered in Bologna need to have already passed the following exams: Letteratura inglese 1, Letteratura inglese 2. This does not apply to Erasmus students.

Teaching tools

The Powerpoint presentations that will be shown during the course will then be made available for students on this website: https://virtuale.unibo.it/

Office hours

See the website of Maurizio Ascari