31031 - English Literature 1 (M-Z)

Learning outcomes

At the end of the course students should know the general outline of literary history. They should be able to read, understand and translate texts from English into Italian and they should also be acquainted with the methods and analytical tools they need to interpret the works of the main authors, contextualising them within their cultural and historical period.

Course contents

"Allegories of Love"
Borrowing the title  of the course from a well-known critical work written by C.S. Lewis, some forms of the expression of love, as it developed in some literary works from the 13th to the 17th century will be investigated. Starting with the concept of courtly love, we'll examine how it changed in the works of Thomas Malory; we'll also see some descriptions of love in Chaucer, in Wyatt's translations from Petrarch, in the Elizabethan poetry, in some works by Shakespeare (namely Romeo and Juliet, Midsummer Night's Dream and the Sonnets), in John Donne, Andrew Marvell and the Cavalier Poets.

Readings/Bibliography

Students are required to read the following works:

Geoffrey Chaucer

The Wife of Bath's Tale

 

Thomas Wyatt

"Whoso List to Hunt”; “What Rage is this?”

 

Edmund Spenser

From Amoretti: “Penelope for her Ulisses' sake”; “My love is like to ice, and I to fire”; “Like as a huntsman after weary chase”; “One day I wrote her name upon the strand”

 

William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream

William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

William Shakespeare, Sonnets (2, 18, 19, 20, 55, 129, 130, 135, 144)

 

John Donne

“The Good-morrow”, “Song: Goe, and Catche”; “The Flea”; “The Apparition”; “A Valediction: forbidding mourning”; The Funerall”; “Batter my heart”

 

Lady Mary Wroth

“When night's black mantle could most darkness prove”; “Take heed mine eyes, how you your looks do cast”

 

Andrew Marvell, "To His Coy Mistress"

 

 

 

Critical texts

N.J. Lacy, “Courtly Love”, in The Arthurian Encyclopedia, New York, Garland, 1986, pp. 121-123

John H. Astington, “Playhouses, players, and playgoers in Shakespeare's time”, in Margreta De Grazia and Stanley Wells, edited by, The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. 99-113

Peter Jones, “Introduction”, in Shakespeare: The Sonnets, London, Macmillan, 1991, pp. 10-21

Harold Bloom, “Romeo and Juliet” e “A Midsummer Night's Dream”, in Shakespeare. The Invention of the Human, New York, Riverhead Books, 1998, pp. 87-103 and 148-170

Northrop Frye, “The Bottomless Dream”, in H. Bloom, ed. by, Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, New York, Chelsea House, 1987, pp. 117-132

Stephen Greenblatt, “Romeo and Juliet” and “A Midsummer Night's Dream”, in The Norton Shakespeare, New York, Norton, 1997, pp. 865-870 e 805-811

Frank Kermode, Shakespeare's Language, London, Penguin, 2000, pp. 52-64

Jan Kott, “Titania and the Ass's Head”, in Shakespeare our Contemporary, London, Methuen, 1978, pp. 171-19  

H.J.C. Grierson, “Donne's Love-Poetry” e C.S. Lewis, “Donne and Love Poetry in the Seventeenth Century”, in Helen Gardner, ed. by, John Donne. A Collection of Critical Essays, Englewood Cliffs, Prentice-Hall, 1962, pp. 23-35 e 90-99.

J. Bennett, “The Love Poetry of John Donne. A Reply to C.S. Lewis”, in A Norton's Critical Edition of John Donne's Poetry, New York, Norton, 1992, pp. 178-194

 

John Peck and Martin Coyle , A Brief History of English Literature, Palgrave, 2002, pp. 1-52 e 73-113

 

Teaching methods

Assessment methods

Erasmus or Overseas students could sit the exam as the Italian students or write an essay (about 10-15 pages), whose topic must be approved by the teacher.

Teaching tools

Office hours

See the website of Gino Scatasta