Learning outcomes

The module aims at making students familiar with authors and genre modes representative of the English literature and culture of the period scheduled for the second-year course (1660-1830) and at fostering their critical approach to the texts and their contexts.

Program

Restoration theatre stages the impossibility to ‘restore’
The aim of this course is to guide students through the uncertainties and precarious balance between aesthetics, ethics and ideology that are to be taken as the Restoration bearers of the modern on its flourishing stage. Starting from Dryden’s most radical adaption of Shakespeare, passing through the highest point reached by the libertine comedy-satire with Wycherley, and then through its grotesquely tragic contestation in The Libertine, students are made aware of culturally crucial texts sharing in common not only themes but also a problematic genre definition.

BIBLIOGRAFIA
Testi primari (si raccomanda la lettura delle rispettive introduzioni)

- W. SHAKESPEARE, Troilus and Cressida (1600), se non già in possesso di un’edizione Arden, si consiglia l’edizione Garzanti con testo a fronte e introduzione di Nemi D’Agostino (1994)
- J. DRYDEN, Troilus and Cressida, or, Truth Found Too Late (1679)
- W. WYCHERLEY, The Country Wife /La moglie di campagna (1675), nell’edizione italiana con testo a fronte curata L. Innocenti, Marsilio, 2009 oppure nell’edizione New Mermaids.
- T. SHADWELL, The Libertine (1677)

N.B.: i testi primari vanno portati all’esame

Testi secondari
- E. LANGHANS, “The Theatre”, in D. Payne Fisk (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to English Restoration Theatre, CUP, 2000, ch.1 (1-18)
- J. MARSDEN, The Re-Imagined Text: Shakespeare Adaptation and Eighteenth-Century Literary Theory, UP of Kentucky, 1995, ch. 1
- J. SPURR, “England 1649-1750: differences contained?”, in S.N.Zwicker (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to English Literature 1650-1740, CUP, 1998, pp.3-32
- J. MUNNS, “Change, scepticism, and uncertainty”, ch.9 (142-157), in D.Payne Fisk (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to English Restoration Theatre, 2000
- S. J. Owen (ed.), A Companion to Restoration Drama, Blackwell, 2001, ch. 4 (“Libertinism and Sexuality”, M.E. Novak), ch.6 (“Masculinity in Restoration Drama”, L.J. Rosenthal)
- H. Weber, The Restoration Rake-Hero, U. Of Wisconsin Press, 1986 (le pagine che verranno indicate a lezione)
- C.J. WHEATLEY, Without God or Reason: the Plays of Thomas Shadwell and Secular Ethics in the Restoration, Bucknell UP, 1993 (la parte che verrà indicata a lezione)

Manuali di riferimento generale
I manuali di riferimento consigliati per il contesto storico-letterario sono: A. Sanders, The Short Oxford History of English Literature, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 2004. M. D’Amico, Dieci secoli di teatro inglese, Mondadori, .

Per la contestualizzazione strettamente storica, si veda M. Kishlansky, L’età degli Stuart. L’Inghilterra dal 1603 al 1714, Il Mulino, 1996

Per la lettura dei testi si consigliano, inoltre, i seguenti manuali di consultazione, del tutto facoltativi:
- C. Segre, Teatro e romanzo, Einaudi, 1984, pp.1-26
- E. Aston, Theatre as a Sign System. A Semiotics of Text and Performance, Routledge, 1988,ch. 6 “Semiotics of Performance”

Informazioni relative al materiale bibliografico e al suo reperimento saranno fornite all’inizio del corso.

BIBLIOGRAFIA SUPPLETIVA OBBLIGATORIA PER GLI STUDENTI NON FREQUENTANTI

-G. Taylor, Reinventing Shakespeare: A Cultural History from Restoration to the Present, ch. 1 “Restoration” (7-39), The Hogarth Press, 1990
-S.J. Owen, Perspectives on Restoration Drama, Manchester U.P., ch.2 (42-64, “William Wycherley’s The Country Wife”); ch.6 (147-169, “John Dryden’s Troilus and Cressida”)

Examination Methods

Assessment at the end of the course through oral examination, mostly in English (or in English only, according to the student’s linguistic competence).