LETTERATURA INGLESE DALL'800 ALL'ETA' CONTEMPORANEA

The course intends 1) to consolidate the students’ historical-literary competence and to provide them with a critically conscious approach to genres, authors and texts; to provide them with the necessary critical tools in order to 2) acquire a comprehensive knowledge of British culture through literature and to 3) improve their linguistic competence through the reading of excerpts as well as some full texts in English.

Module A

British Literature from the 19th century to the present day Outline of history of English literature from Romanticism to the present age; close analysis of a selection of texts that are significant for their formal and epistemological characteristics, and as varied as possible in terms of literary genres and thematic concerns.

Module B

Lilith and Salomè: the bad girls of the Victorian age

By a close reading of two texts, a poem (D.G. Rossetti’s Lilith) and a play (O. Wilde’s Salome), we will explore the configurations of femininity and of non-normative gender identities in the literary imagination of the second half of the 19^th century and in the fin de siècle. With the methodological tools of cultural studies, gender studies and queer theory, we will examine the discursive formations which produced the idea of a powerful but degenerate femininity with the figure of the femme fatale, paralleled by the effeminate masculinity of the dandy. We aim at tracing the connections of these figures with the social anxieties relating to women’s emancipation symbolised by the New Woman, and the emergence of a homosexual identity in late Victorian Britain.

Module C

Killing the angel in the house: Woolf, Carter e the 20th century

The reading of Woolf’s essay A Room of One’s Own (1929) will serve to investigate, in a materialistic perspective, the issue of the historical exclusion of women from the public sphere, from education and from the literary canon. We will then focus on the second half of the 20^th century with a critical analysis of Angela Carter’s collection of short stories The Bloody Chamber (1979), a text which appropriates the patriarchal collective imagination in order to deconstruct it and re-write it in postmodern terms and in terms of feminist sexual politics.

MODULE A

British Literature from the 19th century to the present day (3 CFU)

History of literature (choose one of the following):

1. A. Sanders, The Short Oxford History of English Literature, London, Oxford UP, 3^a ed. 2004 (ch. 6-10).
2. P. Bertinetti (ed.), Storia della letteratura inglese, 2° vol. Torino, Einaudi, 2000 (From Romanticismo all’età contemporanea. Le letterature in inglese, pp. 3-145; 164-248; 269-290; 321-349; 383-419).
3. L. Crisafulli, K. Elam, eds., Manuale di cultura e letteratura inglese, Bologna, Bononia UP, 2008 (Il Romanticismo: pp. 181-218; Il Vittorianesimo: pp. 281-329; Il Novecento: pp. 327-411).

Anthology:

1. The Norton Anthology of English Literature, New York and London: W.W. Norton, vol. II, 9^a ed., 2013;
2. Or, alternatively: The Oxford Anthology of English Literature, Oxford: OUP, vol. II, 1973.

At the oral exams, students will be examined on a selection of 15 texts, as diverse and representative as possible, that they will choose also among those discussed during classes. Students will be required to demonstrate an accurate knowledge of the texts as regards prosody, language and style.

MODULE B

Lilith and Salomè: the bad girls of the Victorian age (3 CFU)

Primary sources (main texts)

- D. Rossetti, “Lilith”, in The Complete Poetical Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (disponibile in “Internet Archive”, http://www.archive.org).

- O. Wilde, Salomè, illustrations by A. Beardsley, with english and italian text, Milano, BUR, latest edition. Or Salomè, with english, italian and french text, Feltrinelli, 2008.

Secondary sources (critical texts)

- V.M. Allen, “One strangling Golden Hair: D.G. Rossetti’s Lady Lilith”, The Art Bulletin, 66, 2, 1984, pp. 285-294.

- S.P. Casteras, “Malleus Maleficarum or The Witches’ Hammer”, in T. Morgan, ed., Victorian Sage and Cultural Discourse, Rutgers U.P., 1990, pp. 142-147.

- J. Donohue, “Distance, Death and Desire in Salome”, in P. Raby, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Oscar Wilde, Cambridge U.P., 1997, pp. 118-141.

- L. Dowling, “The Decadent and the New Woman in the 1890s”, Nineteenth-Century Fiction, 33, 1979, pp. 434-53.

- G. Finney, “The (Wo)man in the Moon: Wilde’s Salomé”, in Women in Modern Drama, Cornell U.P., pp. 55-78.

- R. Gagnier, “Art for Love’s Sake”, in Idylls of the Marketplace: Oscar Wilde and the Victorian Public, Scolar, 1986, pp. 165-169.

- E.L. Gilbert, “‘Tumult of Images’: Wilde, Beardsley and Salome”, Victorian Studies, 26, n. 2, 1983, pp. 133-159.

- C. Parker, “Introduction”, in Gender Roles and Sexuality in Victorian Literature, Scolar, 1995, pp. 1-24.

- H. Tookey, “‘The Fiend That Smithes with a Look’: the Monstrous/Menstruous Woman and the Danger of the Gaze in Wilde’s Salome”, Literature and Theology, 18.1, 2004, pp. 23-37.

Three powerpoint presentations:

- Womanhood in the Victorian Age

- Menacing Femininity

- Wilde, Beardsley, Salome

MODULE C

Killing the angel in the house: Woolf, Carter e the 20th century (3 CFU)

Main texts

- V. Woolf, Una stanza tutta per sé / A Room of One’s Own, english and italian text, ed. M.A. Saracino, Einaudi, 2006.

- V. Woolf, “Professions for Women”, in Women & Writing, ed. M. Barrett, The Women’s Press, 1979, pp. 57-63.

- A. Carter, The Bloody Chamber, Vintage, latest edition.

Testi critici

- J. Goldman, The Cambridge Introduction to Virginia Woolf, 2006, pp. 96-103.

- M. Makinen, “Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber and the Decolonization of Feminine Sexuality”, Feminist Review, 42, 1992, pp. 2-15.

- S. Gamble, “Mad Scientists, Drag Queens and Fairy Godmothers”, in Writing from the Front Line, Edinburgh UP 1997, pp. 130-141.

Methodology

- J. Pilcher, I. Whelehan, eds, 50 Key Concepts in Gender Studies, London, 2004 (parti scelte).

Powerpoint presentation:

- Woolf & Carter

Web sites to consult (part of the progamme for the exam):

on Woolf:

http://modernism.research.yale.edu/wiki/index.php/Virginia_Woolf

on Carter:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2006/jun/24/classics.angelacarter

http://betterknowabook.wordpress.com/2012/01/17/the-bloody-chamber-by-angela-carter/