Teaching code

4S002926

Teacher

Susanna Zinato

Coordinator

Susanna Zinato

Credits

9

Language

English

Scientific Disciplinary Sector (SSD)

L-LIN/10 - ENGLISH LITERATURE

Period

I semestre (Lingue e letterature straniere) dal Sep 28, 2020 al Jan 9, 2021.

Lessons timetable Moodle Seminars 0

Learning outcomes

The course, held in English, aims at introducing the students to English literature (from the Victorian to the contemporary period), with specific reference to a selection of canonical texts, and at presenting methodological approaches for the analysis 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 argumentation 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 EARLY 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 D.H. Lawrence and E. M. Forster.
Classes taught in English.

A) TEXTS
-T. HARDY, Jude the Obscure (1895)
-D-H LAWRENCE, "Sons and Lovers" (1913)
-E.M. FORSTER, Maurice (1914; posthumous publication 1971)


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]
- T. L. Jeffers, " 'We children were the in-betweens': Character (De) Formation in Sons and Lovers", articolo in Texas Studies in Literature and Language, Fall 2000, Vol 42, No.3, pp.290-313 [downloadable from Jstor]

C) HANDBOOK
-Andrew Sanders, "The Short Oxford History of English Literature", Clarendon Press, 2004: chapters 7-10 [in particular the section devoted to Modernism and, more generally, the list of selected authors/movements that has been uploaded on the course moodle ]

D) NON-ATTENDING STUDENTS ARE ASKED TO INTEGRATE THE CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY ABOVE WITH THE FOLLOWING :
N.B. Non-attending students are recommended to read the introductions to the the novels (in whatever editions they have bought them) , as well as to be informed on the bio-bibliographical profiles of the authors Hardy, Lawrence, and Forster
-B. Lowe, "The Bildungsroman", ch.25 (405-420) in The Cambridge History of the English Novel, R. Caserio and C. Hawes (ed.), Cambridge UP, 2012 [available at Frinzi Library]
-D.R. Schwartz, "Hardy's Jude the Obscure: the Beginnings of the Modern Psychological Novel" (ch.2) in ID, Reading the Modern British and Irish Novel 1890-1930, Wiley-Blackwell, 2004 [available at Frinzi library]
-H.J. Booth, "Maurice", in D. Bradshaw (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to E.M. Forster, Cambridge UP, 2007 [available at Frinzi Library]
--S. O'Malley, " 'The final aim is the flower'. Wild and Domestic Nature in Sons and Lovers", articolo in The D.H, Lawrence Review, 2014, Vol.3, No.2, pp.25-45. [downloadable from Jstor]
-S. Chatman, Story and Discourse. Narrative structure in fictiona and film, Cornell UP, 1978, pp-181-219 (on speech/thought presentation techniques).

(Detailed information concerning how to get the above-scheduled bibliographical material will be given at the beginning of the module)

N.B. Student are recommended to provide themselves with the unabridged paperback version of the primary sources.

Examination Methods

The exam will be oral, in English, and will be centred on the topics discussed in classes and on the scheduled texts (A, B, C).
Non-attending students will be examined on A,B,C,D (cf. info on Moodle).

All students must have their own primary texts (A) when they sit for the exam.