CULTURA E LETTERATURA INGLESE I

The course aims:

- to introduce and/or improve the study of English literature from its origins until the Romantics;

- to consolidate and enhance the students’ historical critical awareness of the key authors, texts and genres of the literary period;

- to help students develop a critical understanding of English Literature and Culture and use interpretative tools and critical methodologies, according to the method of textual analysis.

Lectures and seminars.

Should teaching be carried out in mixed mode or remotely, it may be necessary to introduce changes with respect to previous statements, in line with the programme planned and outlined in the syllabus.

Module A (4 CFU):

Part I: In this section the major analytic categories deriving from British Cultural Studies, Gender Studies and Post-colonial Studies will be illustrated.

Part II: In this section of the course textual spaces will be examined as historically specific cultural products acting as vehicles for either hegemonic or dissenting notions of (national) Identity and Otherness.

Module B (2 CFU):

Part I. Features of the Elizabethan theatre (public, as well as private and court theatre) as a social and cultural phenomenon.

Part II: Through the close reading of excerpts from a few paradigmatic plays, the students will see how aspects of the Elizabethan debate on the role and nature of the sovereign and of the Supernatural are dramatized in Shakespeare (Hamlet and Macbeth) and Marlowe (The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus).

Module A To be completed.

Module B

Primary sources:

- Marlowe Christopher, Il Dottor Faust, ed. con testo a fronte, Milano, Mondadori, ultima ed., passi scelti.

- Shakespeare William, Macbeth, London, Arden, ultima ed. (o: Macbeth, ed. it. con testo a fronte, Milano, Feltrinelli, 2013), passi scelti;

- Shakespeare William, Hamlet, London, Arden, ultima ed., (o: Amleto, ed. it. con testo a fronte, Milano, Feltrinelli, 2014) passi scelti.

Secondary sources

- Anzi Anna, Storia del teatro inglese dalle origini al 1660, Torino, Einaudi, 2001; cap. II, pp. 46-75 (per intero); cap. III, pp. 76-83 e 85-161 (paragrafi 1, 3, 4, 5, 6 e 8).

- Bertinetti Paolo (ed.), Storia della letteratura Inglese, Einaudi, Torino, 2000, in due volumi: I volume, Dalle origini al Settecento, pp. 126-202; o, in alternativa:

- Cattaneo Arturo, Short History of English Literature. Vol. I: From the Middle Ages to the Romantics, Milano, Mondadori, 2011, pp. 61-96.

- D’Agostino Nemi, Introduzione a Marlowe, Il Dottor Faust, ed. cit., pp. 7-24;

- Greenblatt Stephen, Introduzioni a Hamlet e Macbeth, in The Norton Shakespeare, New York, Norton, ultima ed., pp. 1659-1666; pp. 2555-2563.

- Manferlotti Stefano, Shakespeare, Roma, Salerno editrice, 2010, pp. 149-160; pp. 180-193;

- Williams George Walton, “Macbeth: King James's Play”, South Atlantic Review, 47, 2, 1982, pp. 12-21.