ENGLISH LITERATURE I
Academic year and teacher
If you can't find the course description that you're looking for in the above list,
please see the following instructions >>
- Versione italiana
- Academic year
- 2022/2023
- Teacher
- ELISA BOLCHI
- Credits
- 9
- Didactic period
- Secondo Semestre
- SSD
- L-LIN/10
Training objectives
- Students will acquire a good knowledge of literary texts analysis and of the development, along centuries, of specific genres in the context of British literature and culture from the XVII century to the XXI century, with a specific focus on the early modern period and on the rise of the novel. A selection of texts will give them the possibility to read British literary culture in both a synchronic and a diachronic perspective. Students will also learn some fundamental methodologies and key issues of literary criticism and textual analysis. Specific theoretical and methodological essays will help students in both reading critically the contexts of production/reception of the texts referred as "primary texts" and interpreting the style and the aesthetic values of the selected authors.
The course also aims to develop in students the following competences connected to the analysis of literary texts:
- Recognizing the characteristics of a literary genre;
- Identifying the stylistic techniques adopted by an author and their relevance at thematic and intertextual level.
- Confronting texts of the same authors and of different authors (intertextual level)
- Locating a text in its historical-cultural context (extra-textual level) Prerequisites
- Knowledge of English Language: level B1 CEFR or higher.
Course programme
- RETHINK, REUSE, REWRITE: RECYCLING LITERATURE FROM SHAKESPEARE TO WINTERSON
Moving from the concept of recycling as a virtuous form of reuse of raw materials to give it a new life and form, the course aims at giving the basis to understand the great themes characterizing literature in order to ponder on the rewritings, the adaptations and on how the knowledge of canonical works of English literature is important for a more competent and complex understanding of everyday life. From the Elizabethan Age to Postmodernism, great literary themes like love and its private and social dynamics, time and its perception, human psyche and its representation will be scrutinized. After studying the Elizabethan Age, the course will focus on two key texts of the Anglophone literary canon and on two examples of literary recycling:
William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet and John Madden, Shakespeare in Love;
Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe and Jeanette Winterson, The Stone Gods
For the Elizabethan Age:
- Sir Thomas More, 'Utopia' - Their occupations.
The sonnet:
Sir Thomas Wyatt, The long love that in my thought doth harbour; They flee from me
Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, Love, that doth reign and live within my thought
Edmund Spenser, from Amoretti: sonnet 75
Sir Philip Sidney, from Astrophil and Stella: sonnet 1
William Shakespeare, from Sonnets: sonnet 18, 116
Metaphysical poets
John Donne, from Songs and Sonnets: “The Sun Rising”; Meditation 17 (“For Whom the Bell Tolls”)
Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress
John Milton, da Sonnets: “When I consider how my light is spent”;
The editions of Shakespeare's works and of novels are those listed in the section 'Testi di riferimento'. Didactic methods
- Classes will be taught in presence in Italian. Students are invited to interact and participate.
First, classes will tackle both the socio-historical context of the selected centuries and the methodological framework of the course. Then, the focus will be on the selected authors.
In order to foster interaction, specific texts (and contexts) will be presented and students will be encouraged to make questions and comments.
Teaching support: live streaming through Google Meet, the link is in the Classroom. Classroom code: btchpyc Learning assessment procedures
- The exam is oral. Students will be tested on the topics of the course. During the exam they will be asked to analyse, comment and translate primary texts according to the methodological essays and to the socio-historical contexts highlighted in the History of Literature. They will also have to know at least one essay for each work in the programme among those listed in the section ‘Testi di riferimento’.
NOTE (6 CFU)
The students of the course in Lettere, arti e archeologia (6 CFU) will only follow the first 30 classes. The exam will be the same but the programme for these students will NOT include Jeanette Winterson’s novel “The Stone Gods” and the essays relative to the novel. In relation to English literary history, the programme and the suggested manuals are the same for the period from Chaucer to Milton. For the following part these students will just have to study:
Ronald Carter and John McRae, “The Routledge History of Literature in English: Britain and Ireland” (London: Routledge, 2017), pp. 53-94, 115-124, 147-160 (excluding the section ‘Language note’)
Non-attending students should refer to the section “Testi di riferimento”. Reference texts
- Primary texts:
William Shakespeare, 'Romeo and Juliet', ed. by René Weis, The Arden Shakespeare (any edition)
Daniel Defoe, 'Robinson Crusoe', ed. by Thomas Keymer, Oxford World’s Classics (any edition)
Jeanette Winterson, 'The Stone Gods', Penguin (or any other edition)
THEORETICAL-METHODOLOGICAL ESSAYS
Students will have to show the knowledge of the history of English literature from Chaucer to Milton. They will thus have to study:
Ronald Carter and John McRae, 'The Routledge History of Literature in English: Britain and Ireland' (London: Routledge, 2017), da p. 53 a p. 94. Inoltre dovranno studiare le sezioni seguenti: pp. 115-124, 147-160, 501-515
e
Marco Canani, Francesca Chiappini, Sara Sullam, 'Introduzione allo studio della letteratura inglese' (Roma: Carocci, 2017).
Non-attending students will also add this text to the programme:
Riccardo Capoferro, 'Defoe: Guida al Robinson Crusoe' (Roma: Carocci, 2003)
CRITICAL ESSAYS
For 'Romeo and Juliet', one of the following essays:
1. Fusini, Nadia (2021), ‘Godo di te, con te, dice Giulietta’, in Nadia Fusini, Maestre d’amore. Giulietta, Ofelia, Desdemona e le altre (Torino: Einaudi), pp. 7-31.
2. Delabastita, Dirk (2017) ‘He shall signify from time to time’. Romeo and Juliet in modern English, Perspectives, 25:2, pp. 189-213, DOI: 10.1080/0907676X.2016.1234491
3. Bigliazzi, Silvia (2018) ‘Romeo before Romeo: Notes on Shakespeare Source Study’, Memoria di Shakespeare, 5, pp. 13-39.
4. Kottman, Paul A. (2012), ‘Defying the Stars: Tragic Love as the Struggle for Freedom in "Romeo and Juliet”’, Shakespeare Quarterly, 1, 63, 1, pp. 1-38.
For 'Shakespeare in Love', one of the following essays:
1. Sudha Shastri (2019) Will Shakespeare Has a Play; I Have a Theatre: Market, Exchange, and Artistic Production in Shakespeare in Love, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 36:4, pp. 311-326, DOI: 10.1080/10509208.2019.1589872
2. Colaiacomo, Paola (2015), ‘Persona Pratica e Persona Poetica’, Memoria Shakespeariana, 2, pp. 1-23.
3. Klett, Elizabeth (2001), ‘Shakespeare in Love and the End(s) of History’ in Retrovisions: Reinventing the past in film and fiction, ed. by Cartmell, D., Hunter, I. Q., & Whelehan, I. (Pluto Press), pp. 25-40
For 'Robinson Crusoe', one of the following essays:
1. Capoferro, Riccardo (2017) “Fears, Apprehensions and Conjectures. Suspense in Robinson Crusoe”, English Literature, 4, pp. 91-104. DOI: 10.14277/2420-823X/EL-4-17-6
2. Sertoli, Giuseppe (2014), ‘I due Robinson’ in Idem, I due Robinson e altri saggi sulla letteratura inglese del Settecento, Genova, ECIG, pp. 45-81.
3. Grapard, Ulla (1995) ‘Robinson Crusoe: The quintessential economic man?’, Feminist Economics, 1:1, pp. 33-52, DOI: 10.1080/714042213
For 'The Stone Gods', one of the following essays:
1. Francesca Nadja Palitzsch (2012), ‘Real Lives – Living Wild. Authenticity, Wilderness, and the Postmodern Robinsonade in James Hawes, Speak for England and Jeanette Winterson’s The Stone Gods’, in The Aesthetics of Authenticity: Medial Constructions of the Real, edited by W. Funk, F. Gross, and I. Huber (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers), pp. 141-161.
2. Adeline Johns-Putra (2017), ‘The unsustainable aesthetics of sustainability: the sense of an ending in Jeanette Winterson’s The Stone Gods’, in Literature and sustainability. Concept, text and culture, ed. by Adeline Johns-Putra, John Parham and Louise Squire (Manchester University Press), pp. 177-194.
3. Elisa Bolchi (2014), ‘Fuga verso il presente. Un’analisi delle fughe in The Stone Gods di Jeanette Winterson’, L’analisi linguistica e letteraria, 1-2, 2014, pp. 137-144.
Critical essays will be available in the section ‘Materiale didattico’ of the Classroom.
