Learning outcomes

The course “Identity issues in 18th and Early 19th-c. Literature” will show how literature, and the novel in particular, deal with the new identities and ethnic issues which became more relevant during these centuries. Through this filter we will analyse how the aesthetic, cultural, economic, and philosophical changes of this complex age, rich in dramatic historical events, will permeate the literary field.
The course will be taught in English.

Program

1. History of Literature from 1660 to 1830. 
All Students must demonstrate to be able to illustrate the development of the various literary genres and to know the authors pertaining to each of them.


- Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol. C, “The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century”, and Vol. D, “The Romantic Period”, Norton, New York 2006 (1962) for the period required.


- Y. Bezrucka, Synopsis of English Literature, under publication.



TEXTS

- The Citizen of the World (1760), recent OUP or Penguin ed. Letters: 4-5, 11, 19, 28-30, 39, 49, 52, 62,74-75, 79, 89-90, 96, 100, 102, 114.
- Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, OUP or Penguin ed.

- Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, OUP or Penguin ed.

- Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights, OUP or Penguin ed.

Bibliography 

Students will have to read:

- Y. Bezrucka, “L’invenzione del paesaggio nordico tra Settecento e Ottocento”, in Il paesaggio romantico, W. Busch, A. Larcati, Fiorini, Verona , 2012, pp. 41-67.

- Susan Meyer, Imperialism at Home: Race and Victorian Women's Fiction, Cornell UP, Ithaca, NY, 1996, pp. 1-29, 96-125.
- Jeffrey Williams, Theory and the Novel: Narrative Reflexivity in the British Tradition, pp. Cambridge UP, Cambridge 1998, pp.134-46.
- J. Hillis Miller, Fiction and Repetition, Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1982, ch. on Emily Brontë.
- Eve Kosofsky, Sedgwick, The Coherence of Gothic Conventions, Methuen, London, Methuen, 1986 (FRINZI)
- Patrick Brantlinger, “The Gothic Origins of Science Fiction”, “Novel”, Vol. 14, No. 1, Autumn 1980, pp. 30-43.
- H.L. Malchow, “Frankenstein’s Monster and Images of Race in Nienteenth-Century Britain”, ‘Past & Present’, No. 139, May 1993, pp. 90-130.
- Denise Gigante, “Facing the Ugly: The Case of ‘Frankenstein’”, ELH, vol. 67, No. 2, Summer 2000, pp. 565-87.
- Ronald Paulson, “Gothic Fiction and the French Revolution”, ELH, Vol. 48, no. 3, Autumn 1981, pp. 532-54.
- Angela Wright, “Gothic Fiction: A Reader’s Guide to Essential Criticism”, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2007.

Examination Methods

ORAL VIVA
Students might hand in, if they wish and before sitting for the exam, an essay about an author or a relevant work of the period 1660-1850.