Teaching code

4S002926

Teacher

Susanna Zinato

Coordinatore

Susanna Zinato

Credits

9

Scientific Disciplinary Sector (SSD)

L-LIN/10 - ENGLISH LITERATURE

Language

English

Period

I semestre (Lingue e letterature straniere) dal Sep 30, 2019 al Jan 11, 2020.

Lessons timetable

Moodle

Learning outcomes

The course, held in English, aims at intro-ducing the students to English literature (from the Victorian to the contemporary period), with specific reference to a selec-tion of canonical texts, and at presenting methodological approaches for the analy-sis of literary texts and genres. The course aims at providing a good knowledge of British literature (articulated in historical context, texts, genres, literary trends and authors) and the skills for a critical analysis and argumentation on different kinds of texts in their historical and cultural context. At the end of the course, students will be able to: - Analyse the literary texts of the programme in their historical and cultural context; - Apply an aware critical approach to literary texts and present an argumen-tation which shows knowledge of literary conventions - Express the acquired literary and critical competence in English clearly and coherently.

Program

The module will offer a critical reading of literary texts belonging to the literary period scheduled for the first-year students of the BA course in Foreign Languages and Literatures, by adopting as its fil rouge the BILDUNGSROMAN FROM LATE VICTORIANISM TO MODERNISM.
It will first provide the students with the necessary narratological tools of text analysis. Then they will be engaged in a close reading and study of the modes of genre remoulding (with reference to its themes, such as the generational and social tensions and the search for one's identity in the confrontation with authority, sexuality, politics, religion) that, starting from Thomas Hardy's late-Victorian/proto-Modernist experience will go through the fundamental, though diverse, modernist inflections given to it by E. M. Forster, J. Joyce (here represented by a short story), and by V. Woolf.
Classes taught in English.

A) TEXTS
-Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure (1895)
-E.M. Forster, Maurice (1914; posthumous publication 1971)
-James Joyce, "Eveline" (in Dubliners, 1914)
-Virginia Woolf, Jacob's Room (1922)

B) CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY
-B. Hardy, "Good Times in Jude the Obscure: Constructing Fictions", in ID, Thomas Hardy. Imagining Imagination: Hardy's Poetry and Fiction, Athlone Press, 2000, ch.3 [available in Frinzi Library]
-A, Hartree, " 'A passion that few English minds have admitted': Homosexuality and Englishness in E.M. Forster's Maurice", articolo in Paragraph. A Journal of Modern Critical Theory, Vol. 19, No.2 (1996): 127-138 [downloadable from JSTOR]
-L. Peach, Virginia Woolf, ch.4 (pp.67-87), St. Martin's Press, 2000 [available in Frinzi Library]

C) HANDBOOK
-Andrew Sanders, The Short Oxford History of English Literature, Clarendon Press, 2004: chapters 7-10

NON-ATTENDING STUDENTS ARE ASKED TO INTEGRATE THECRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY ABOVE WITH THE FOLLOWING :
-S. Chatman, Story and Discourse. Narrative structure in fictiona and film, Cornell UP, 1978, ch. 3: 108-134, ch. 4: 173-186, ch.5: 197-215.[available in Frinzi library]
-D.R. Schwartz, "Hardy's Jude the Obscure: the Beginnings of the Modern Psychological Novel" (ch.2) and "Joyce's Dubliners: Moral Paralysis in Dublin" (ch.7), in ID, Reading the Modern British and Irish Novel 1890-1930, Wiley-Blackwell, 2004 [available in Frinzi library]
-H.J. Booth, "Maurice", in D. Bradshaw (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to E.M. Forster, Cambridge UP, 2007 [available in Frinzi Library]
-S. Raitt, "Finding a Voice: Virginia Woolf's Early Novels" (ch.2), in S. Roe and S. Sellers (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Virginia Woolf, Cambridge UP, 2000 [available in Frinzi library]

Bibliografia

Examination Methods