LETTERATURA INGLESE DALL'800 ALL'ETA' CONTEMPORANEA

This course intends to 1) present students with the historical-literary trends, as well as the most significant authors of XIX-XX century Britain; 2) critically work on the peculiar aspects of literary genres; 3) consolidate the students’ use of text analysis and appreciation tools.

Divided into two modules, both the course and the syllabus will be in Italian and English.

Module A, English Literature of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (7 ECTS), is centred both on the evolutionary phases and the most representative figures of modern contemporary literature. The texts that will be analyzed in class will reinforce the students’ use of stylistic and critical appreciation tools.

Module B, Recounting World War II: Xenophobia, Discimination and Death in Scot-Italian Migrant Literature (2 ECTS), will be centred on contemporary times, particularly on the way Scot-Italian migrant literature has depicted the Italian community after Mussolini declared war on Britain and the Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered the deportation of Italian residents in the country. 80 years have passed since 10th June 1940: works such as Ann Marie Di Mambro’s Tally’s Blood (2002) and Anne Pia’s A Language of My Choosing: The Candid Life-Memoir of an Italian-Scot) (2017) deserve the modern reader’s attention as they contribute to a thorough knowledge of World War II.

The materials that will be used in class, including the chosen extracts and bibliographical references, will be immediately made available, even in electronic form, for those students who will not attend classes.

Module A – English Literature of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: An Overview (7 ECTS)

The course will mostly be based on text-analysis activities. Every author and extract, though, will be presented from the historico-cultural point of view and connected with distinctive topics. In this way, it will easier to value their contribution to the development of the main literary genres and literary trends:

1. The Romantic Age

Nature, Imagination and Egotism

William Blake, The Lamb (1789)

William Wordsworth, “The Preface” to The Lyrical Ballads (1801)

ID., Daffodils (1804)

Ethics, Bioethics and Dissent

S.T. Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798)

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818)

P.B. Shelley, Song: To the Men of England (1819)

Forms of Escapism: History and Beauty

Walter Scott, Ivanhoe (1819)

John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn (1819)

Students will also study the historico-literary background, as well as biography and production of the following authors:

Poetry: Robert Burns – Lord G.G. Byron

Fiction: Jane Austen

1. The Victorian Age

Representing Reality

Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton (1848)

Charles Dickens: Hard Times (1854)

G.B. Shaw, Mrs. Warren’s Profession (1902)

A New Gothic, Horror and the Double

R.L. Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde (1886)

Bram Stoker, Dracula (1897)

Rewriting the Past, the Aestetic Mouvement and Nonsense

Alfred Tennyson, Ulysses (1833)

Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland (1865)

Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)

Students will also study the historico-literary background, as well as biographical data and production of the following authors:

Poetry: Robert Browining – E. Lear – Christina Rossetti – G.M. Hopkins

Fiction: Charlotte Brontë – W.M. Thackeray – George Eliot – Thomas Hardy –Rudyard Kipling

Essay Writing – John Ruskin – Walter Pater

3. Contemporary Times

Between Tradition and Innovation: Towards Modernism

Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (1899)

James Joyce, Ulysses (1922)

T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land (1922)

The Thirties and Forties: Political Commitment and Dystopia

W.H. Auden: Refugee Blues (1940)

G. Orwell, 1984 (1948)

The After War Years: Rage, Alienation and Displacement

Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot (1953)

John Osborrne, Look Back in Anger (1956)

Philip Larkin: Talking in Bed (1967)

Postmodernism: The Role of History and Formal Experiments

Muriel Spark, Territorial Rights (1971)

John Fowels, The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1981)

Students will also study the historico-literary background, as well as biography and production of the following authors:

Poetry: W.B. Yeats – I War Poets (Rupert Booke – Wilfred Owen – Sigfried Sassoon) – Stevie Smith – Dylan Thomas – Ted Hughes – Thom Gunn – Seamus Heaney

Fiction: E.M. Forster – Virginia Woolf – D.H. Lawrence – J. Rhys – Aldous Huxley – Graham Green – William Golding – Kingsley Amis – Anthony Burgess – Doris Lessing – Angela Carter – I. McEwan – Kazuo Ishiguro – Roddy Doyle – Irvine Welsh – Zadie Smith

Drama: John Arden – Arnold Wesker – Tom Stoppard – Harold Pinter – Sarah Kane

As to postcolonial literature, students will focus at least on

Africa: Nadine Gordimer – Chinua Achebe – Wole Soyinka – Ngugi wa Thiong’o

Canada: Margaret Lawrence – Margaret Atwood

The West Indies: Derek Walcott – V.S. Naipaul

India: R.K. Narayan – Sulman Rushdie – Arundhati Roy

Module B – Recounting World War II: Xenophobia, Discimination and Death in Scot-Italian Migrant Literature (2 ECTS)

Module B will also be based on close-reading activities. After a short introduction to the history of Italian migration in Scotland and the war years, students will concentrate on extracts from Ann Marie Di Mambro, Tally’s Blood (2002) and Anne Pia, Language of My Choosing. The Candid Life-Memoir of an Italian-Scot (2017).

Module A – English Literature of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: An Overview (7 ECTS)

Recommended handbooks

Students will choose one of the following :

- Blamires, Harry. A Short History of English Literature, London, Routledge, 2013, pp. 231-423.

- Sanders, A. The Short Oxford History of English Literature, London, Oxford University Press, 2004 (ch. 6-10 – approx. 280 pages).

Other materials

The PPT presentation, complete with intertextual links and audio-video materials, is part of the syllabus. They will also be made available in electronic form.

Students will study the historico-literary background, as well as biographical data and production of the above-mentioned authors and texts. As regards Postcolonial literature, students will focus on:

Africa: Nadine Gordimer – Chinua Achebe – Wole Soyinka – Ngugi wa Thiong’o

Canada: Margaret Lawrence – Margaret Atwood

The West Indies: Derek Walcott – V.S. Naipaul

India: R.K. Narayan – Sulman Rushdie – Arundhati Roy

Module B – Recounting World War II: Xenophobia, Discimination and Death in Scot-Italian Migrant Literature (2 ECTS)

This part of the course will be based on extracts from

Ann Marie Di Mambro, Tally’s Blood (2002)

Anne Pia, Language of My Choosing. The Candid Life-Memoir of an Italian-Scot (2017).

They will refer to Ann Marie Di Mambro, Tally’s Blood, Abingdon, Hodder Gibson, 2014 and Anne Pia, Language of My Choosing. The Candid Life-Memoir of an Italian-Scot, Edinburgh, Luath Press, 2017.

Historical and Methodological Essays

Burrell Kathy and Panikos Panayi, Histories and Memories: Migrants and their History in Britain, London, I.B. Tauris 2006, pp. 57-74.

Ugolini Wendy, Experiencing War as the ‘Enemy Other’. Italian Scottish Experience in World War II, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2011, pp. 90-103; 118-139.

The PPT presentation will be part of the study materials of this module.

Please remember that in compliance with art 171 L22.04.1941, n. 633 and its amendments, it is illegal to copy entire books or journals, only 15% of their content can be copied.

For further information on sanctions and regulations concerning photocopying please refer to the regulations on copyright (Linee Guida sulla Gestione dei Diritti d’Autore) provided by AIDRO - Associazione Italiana per i Diritti di Riproduzione delle opere dell’ingegno (the Italian Association on Copyright).

All the books listed in the programs can be consulted in the Library.