LETTERATURA INGLESE COMPARATA

The course intends to enhance and/or consolidate the students’ general historical-literary knowledge and their critical awareness of key issues of the twentieth-century British literary culture, with a special attention being paid to women’s fiction through a close reading of some relevant primary texts supported by ad-hoc critical-methodological tools. The course intends to advance the students’ reading and interpretive skills with the aim of developing a more mature critical competence concerning the aesthetic configurations and ethical-political implications of literary texts.

Module A (3 CFU): The “queer design” of Modernist Fiction: Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway

This module will offer a reading of Virginia Woolf’s theoretical texts on “Modern Fiction” and various critical interpretations of her novel Mrs. Dalloway (1925), in order to explore the complexity of British and European Modernism and its innovative impulse on the literary production of the 20th century, which will extend its influence on postmodernism.

We will examine the formal, structural, thematic and narrative elements of Woolf’s text through a variety of critical approaches: our aim is to discover the consonance between Woolf’s modernist narrative experimentalism – her project to radically “re-form” literary conventions and genres – and her socio-political vision in the historical context of Great Britain and Europe between the wars. Mrs Dalloway, as a “city symphony” novel, allows for a multiplicity of readings which reveal its rich tapestry of themes and visions: pacifism, anti-imperialism, critique of hetero-patriarchy, resistance to medical, psychiatric and sexological discourses, all of which are intertwined with poetical and philosophical musings on time, reality, life and death.

Module B (3 CFU)

Modern and postmodern interpretations of the grotesque (notably, Bakhtin’s anti-establishment carnivalesque view) have regarded it as a mode which violates established boundaries of style, genres, and world-views. Though sceptical of its androcentric articulations, many contemporary women writers have welcomed the grotesque’s disruptive effects of de-formation of traditional categories and its challenge to binary hierarchies as conducive to a critique of the patriarchal ideological and cultural paradigms underpinning the dominant literary discourse.

Referring to the European and British critical literature on the grotesque, Module B will investigate the role it plays in A. Carter’s Nights at the Circus (1984) and J. Winterson’s Sexing the Cherry (1989) towards promoting the deconstruction of conventional formal and narrative structures as well as the characters’ ‘realistic’ representation. The aim will be to single out the dynamics through which the two novels’ eccentric narrative experimentation, free re-invention of History, and celebration of excessive bodies amplify the grotesque’s most riotous features into a far-ranging meditation on the limits of notions of ‘feminine’, or even human, identity, and into an interrogation of the complacent canonical forms of literary discourse.

Module A (3 CFU)

The “queer design” of Modernist Fiction: Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway

Primary texts:

- V. Woolf, La signora Dalloway. Testo inglese a fronte. A cura di M. Sestito, Venezia, Marsilio 2012

- “Slater’s Pins Have No Points”, in A Haunted House and Other Short Stories, London, The Hogarth Press, 1953, pp. 102-109 (available from the library)

- “Modern Fiction” in Selected Essays, Oxford UP, Oxford World’s Classics, 2009, pp. 6-12 [trad. it. “La narrativa moderna”, in Il lettore comune, Genova, Il Melangolo, 1995, pp. 166-175]

- “Professions for Women”, in Women and Writing, London, The Women’s Press 1979, pp. 57-63 [trad. it. Le donne e la scrittura, Milano, La Tartaruga 1981, available from the library]

Criticism:

- V. Amoruso, “La signora Dalloway”, in id. Virginia Woolf, Bari, Adriatica 1968, pp. 111-148 [available from the library]

- E. Barrett, “Unmasking Lesbian Passion: The Inverted World of Mrs. Dalloway”, in E. Barrett, P. Cramer eds., Virginia Woolf: Lesbian Readings, N.Y. & London, New York University Press, 1997, pp. 146-164

- E. Douglas, “Queering Flowers, Queering Pleasures in ‘Slater’s Pins Have No Points’”, Virginia Woolf Miscellany 82, Fall 2012, pp. 13-15.

- J. Goldman, “Contexts” e “Mrs. Dalloway”, in The Cambridge Introduction to Virginia Woolf, Cambridge UP 2006, pp. 33-36 e pp. 53-58 [available from the library]

- J. Goldman, “From Mrs. Dalloway to The Waves”, in S. Sellers ed., The Cambridge Companion to Virginia Woolf, Cambridge UP, 2010, pp. 49-59

- L. Marcus, “Virginia Woolf and The Cinema: Modernity and Montage”, in id. The Tenth Muse: Writing about Cinema in the Modernist Period, Oxford UP 2007, pp. 139-143

- S. Squier, Virginia Woolf and London: the Sexual Politics of the City, University of North Carolina Press, 1985, pp. 91-121

- S. Sellers, “Chronology”, in id., The Cambridge Companion to Virginia Woolf, Cambridge UP, 2010, pp. xii-xvii

Methodology:

- F. Marenco, “Il romanzo, quel cannibale”, in F. Marenco, a cura di, Storia della civiltà letteraria inglese, Torino UTET, 1996, vol. 3, pp. 42-48 e pp. 66-73 [available from the library]

- M. Pagnini, “Difficoltà e oscurità: il linguaggio del Modernismo”, in F. Marenco, a cura di, Storia della civiltà letteraria inglese, Torino UTET, 1996, vol. 3, pp. 24-40 [available from the library]

Web resources:

- Cenni biografici su V. Woolf (Yale University)

http://modernism.research.yale.edu/wiki/index.php/Virginia_Woolf#cite_note-15

- E. Showalter, “Exploring Consciousness” (video, British Library) (https://www.bl.uk/20th-century-literature/articles/exploring-consciousness-and-the-modern-an-introduction-to-mrs-dalloway

- D. Bradshaw, “Mrs Dalloway and the First World War” (article, British Library)

https://www.bl.uk/20th-century-literature/articles/mrs-dalloway-and-the-first-world-war

- M. Taunton, “Modernism, Time and Consciousness: the Influence of Bergson and Proust” (article, British Library)

https://www.bl.uk/20th-century-literature/articles/modernism-time-and-consciousness-the-influence-of-henri-bergson-and-marcel-proust

- P. Cohen, “The Virginia Woolf of ‘The Hours’ Angers the Real One’s Fans”, New York Times, 15 Feb. 2003 (article)

http://donswaim.com/nytimes.hours.html

Module B (3 CFU)

Figures of Excess: The Grotesque Aesthetic of Subversion in Contemporary Women’s Fiction

Primary texts:

A. Carter, Nights at The Circus (1984), London, Vintage, latest ed. [available from the library]. [It. trans. Notti al circo (trans. Mariagiulia Castagnone; afterword by Dacia Maraini), Roma, Fazi editore, 2017].

J. Winterson, Sexing the Cherry (1989), London, Vintage, latest ed. [available from the library]. [It. trans. Il sesso delle ciliegie (trans. Carlo A. Corsi), Milano, Mondadori, 1999].

Criticism:

About Angela Carter’s novel Nights at the Circus:

1. M. C. Michael, “Fantasy and Carnivalization in Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus”, in Feminism and the Postmodern Impulse: Post-World War II Fiction, State University of New York Press, 1996, pp. 171-208.
2. S. Robinson, Engendering the Subject: Gender and Self-Representation in Contemporary Women’s Fiction, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991, pp. 117-132.
3. M. J. Russo, “Revamping Spectacle: Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus,” in The Female Grotesque: Risk, Excess, and Modernity, London & New York, Routledge, 1994, pp. 159-81.

About Jeanette Winterson’s novel Sexing the Cherry:

1. M. Makinen, “Sexing the Cherry”, in The Novels of Jeanette Winterson: A Reader’s Guide to Essential Criticism, Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, pp. 82-109.
2. S. González, “Winterson’s Sexing the Cherry: Rewriting ‘Woman’ Through Fantasy”, in C. D’Arcy Cornut-Gentille and J. A. G. Landa (eds), Gender I-deology: Essays on Theory, Fiction and Film, Amsterdam & Atlanta: Rodopi, 1996, pp. 281-95.
3. S. Onega, “History and storytelling”, in Contemporary British Novelists: Jeanette Winterson, Manchester and New York: Manchester UP, 2006, pp. 76-107.

Methodology (one text freely chosen among those listed):

1. M. Bakhtin, “Introduction”, in Rabelais and His World, Bloomington, IN, Indiana University Press, 1984, pp. 1-58 [available from the library]. [It. trans. L’opera di Rabelais e la cultura popolare: Riso, carnevale e festa nella tradizione medievale e rinascimentale, Torino, Einaudi, 2001. “Introduzione”, pp. 3-68] [available from the library].
2. L. Curti, “Hybrid Fictions… and Monstrous Bodies in Contemporary Women’s Writing”, in Female Stories, Female Bodies: Narrative, Identity, and Representation, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1998, pp. 80-132.
3. L. Fiedler, “Introductory”; “Freaks and the Literary Imagination,” in Freaks: Myths and Images of the Secret Self, New York and London, Anchor Books, Doubleday, 1993, pp. 13-36; 256-99 [available from the library]. [It. trans. Freaks. Miti e immagini dell’io segreto (trans. A. E. Capriolo), Milano, Il Saggiatore, 2009. “Introduzione”, pp. 9-34; “I «freaks» e l’immaginazione letteraria”, pp. 266-284].
4. J. Kristeva, Powers of Horror - An Essay on Abjection, New York, Columbia University Press, 1982, pp. 1-55 [It. trans. Poteri dell’orrore. Saggio sull’abiezione (trans. A. Scalco), Milano, Spirali, 2006. “Approccio all’abiezione”, pp. 3-33; “Di che aver paura”, pp. 34-58].

Students from the course in Modern Philology (“Filologia Moderna”) may use the Italian translations of primary, critical and methodological texts (whenever available, they are referenced in square brackets).

As a reading aid for texts unavailable in Italian, students may want to consult G. Ragazzini, A. Biagi, Dizionario Inglese-Italiano, Italian-English Dictionary, Milano: Zanichelli (6^th ed.), 2013.

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.