CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH LITERATURE

This course is centred on British women’s significant pieces of contemporary writing. It aims to 1) present students with the main English cultural and literary trends; 2) critically work on gender, national identity, and the “other” in Anglo-Italian contexts; 3) enable students to use text analysis and literary appreciation tools.

Travel, Identity, and the (Italian) “Other”: English Culture and Literature from the Victorian Age to the present.

Seminars:

Module A, British Women Writing Italy: Poetry, Fiction, and Travel, is centred on two XX-XXI century English women writers. The textual analysis and critical appreciation of pieces taken from Muriel Spark’s and Jan Morris’s literary production will draw the students’ attention to their representation of the Italian “other”. In addition, they will draw a list of 15 other authors, who have written on the same issues and themes in contemporary times.

Module B, Italian Migrant Communities in Contemporary Britain: Perceptions and Self-Perceptions, focuses on Anita Arcari and Mary Contini. Second generation British writers, they have written about Italy and the Italian communities in Scotland, and Wales. The texts that have been included in the methodology section will shed light on the history of Italian migration to Britain in pre and post-war years, as well as on the concepts of “perception” and “self-perception” in Anglo-Italian contexts.

The course will be rich in text analysis activities. The materials that will be used in class, complete with both selected extracts from the above-mentioned literary works and bibliographical references, will be part of the syllabus. They will be immediately made available, even in electronic form, for those students who cannot attend the course.

1. Travel, Identity, and Otherness in XX-XXI Literature

Recommended Handbook

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

Recommended Anthology

S. Greenglatt, Carol Christ, Catherine Robson, The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ninth Edition, New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 2012.

2. Seminars

A. British Women Writing Italy: Poetry, Fiction, and Travel

Texts

Muriel Spark, Territorial Rights (1979)

- Jan Morris, Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere (2001)

Methodology

Martin Pfister and Ralf Hertel (eds), Performing National Identity. Anglo-Italian Cultural Transactions, Amsterdam, Rodopi, 2008, 103-136; 159-169; 197-234.

- Tim Youngs, The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2013, pp. 50-177.

B. Italian Migrant Communities in Contemporary Britain: Perceptions and Self-Perceptions

Texts

Mary Contini, Dear Olivia: An Italian Journey of Love and Courage (2007)

- Anita Arcari, The Hockey Pokey Man (2010)

Methodology

Margherita Sprio, Migrant Memories: Cultural History, Cinema and the Italian Post-War Diaspora in Britain, Bern, Peter Lang, 2013, pp. 1-76; 195-214.

- Kathy Burrell and Panikos Panayi, Histories and Memories: Migrants and their History in Britain, London, I.B. Tauris 2006, 1-114.