ENGLISH LITERATURE

L-LIN/10 - 9 CFU - 2° Semester

Teaching Staff

MANUELA FORTUNATA D'AMORE


Learning Objectives

The main learning objectives of this course are: 1) enhancing students’ knowledge of nineteenth-century England; 2) working on the concept of ekphrasis, i.e., on the relation between art and poetry, thus on intermediality; 3) forstering a systematic reflection on art and poetry from Romanticism to the Victorian Age; 4) focusing on The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s selected “double works”; 5) improving students’ use of text analysis and literary appreciation tools.


Course Structure

Both the course and the syllabus are divided into 2 modules: 1) Literature and the Other Arts in Romantic England (3 ECTS); 2) The Victorian Age: The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and Dante Gabriel Rossetti (6 ECTS).

The course will be held in English. The materials that will be used in class, complete with the chosen works’ extracts, bibliographical references and audio-video materials, will be immediately made available in electronic form for those students who will not attend classes.



Detailed Course Content

Module A, Literature and the Other Arts in Romantic England (4 ECTS), will focus on the relation between art and poetry during Romanticism. The textual analysis and critical appreciation of pieces taken from William Blake’s, William Wordsworth’s, P.B. Shelley’s, John Keats’s and Lord Byron’s literary production will give them the chance to gain a clearer understanding of both the main aesthetic models and artistic practices of the time.

Taught by Prof. Béatrice Laurent (Université de Bordeaux), Module B, The Victorian Age: The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and Dante Gabriel Rossetti (5 ECTS), will start from the Aesthetic debate at the time of Queen Victoria, thus showing the Pre-Raphaelites’ and Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s special contribution. In particular, close attention will be paid to the Anglo-Italian poet’s short narrative Hand and Soul (1849), as well as his most famous “double works”.



Textbook Information

A. Literature and the Other Arts in Romantic England (4 ECTS)

Historical and Literary Background

Students will choose one of the following:

Texts

The authors’ bionotes, together with useful information about the above-mentioned texts, will be included in the PPT that will be presented in class, and that will be made available in electronic form.

Methodology

B. The Victorian Age: The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and Dante Gabriel Rossetti (5 ECTS)

Historical and Literary Background.

Students will choose one of the following handbooks:

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

Ruskin John, Preraphaelitism, London, Smith & Elder, 1851.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti: From Fiction to Double Works

The above-mentioned texts will be taken from Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Collected Writings, edited by Jan Marsh, London, J.M. Dent, 1999.

Critical Essays

D’Amore Manuela, “Ekphrastic Representations of the Mystical ‘Other’: Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Poetry (1849-1881)”, in Gioia Angeletti, Giovanna Buonanno, Diego Saglia (eds.), Remediating Imagination. Literatures and Cultures from the Renaissance to the Postcolonial, Roma, Carocci, 2016, pp. 73-84.

Marsh Jan, Introduction, in ID. (ed.), Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Collected Writings, London, J. Dent, 1999, pp. xi-xxvii.

Kashtan Aaron, Pre-Raphaelite Approaches to Ut Pictura Poesis: Sister Arts or Sibling Rivalry?, «English and History of Art», 151, Brown University, 2004.http://www.victorianweb.org/painting/prb/kashtan12.html

Further information about The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the above-mentioned texts will be included in the PPT that will be shown in class, and that will be made available in electronic form.




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