According to the Dublin descriptors, students, at the end of the course, will demonstrate:
1) Knowledge and Understanding
This course intends to present students with the main cultural/literary trends of late modern and contemporary Britain and Italy, thus focusing on the main features of travel and migrant writing in Anglo-Italian contexts. The activities that will be carried out on the texts included in the syllabus will also enhance their comprehension skills.
2) Applying Knowledge and Understanding
A considerable part of the course will be dedicated to close reading activities, which will help students to develop their literary appreciation tools, also to apply their knowledge of Italian and British culture in late modern and contemporary times.
3) Making Judgement
Close reading activities will promote students’ ability to make judgement, also to establish stylistic and thematic relations among the texts included in the syllabus.
4) Communication skills
Text analysis activities, as well as exchanges on the chosen texts will enhance students’ communication skills also in English.
5) Learning skills
Students will develop a deeper awareness of their learning skills, which will result in a more mature and autonomous approach to texts.
Both the course and the syllabus are divided into 2 modules:
1) Writing Italy: Fiction and Travel (3 ECTS);
2) Italian Migrant Communities in Scotland: Perceptions and Self-Perceptions (3 ECTS);
Module A, Writing Italy: Fiction and Travel (3 ECTS), is centred on four XIX-XXI century English writers: Charles Dickens, E.M. Forster, Muriel Spark, and Jan Morris. The extracts that will be presented in class will draw the students’ attention to the way the Italian “other” has been represented until today.
Module B, Italian Migrant Communities in Scotland: Perceptions and Self-Perceptions (3 ECTS), will focus on Joe Pieri (1918-2012), Ann Marie Di Mambro (1949―), Anne Pia (1951―) e Mary Contini (1961―), Scots-Italian writers, who have written about the Italian communities in Glasgow and Edinburgh. Their works will throw light on the history of Italian migration to Britain as well as on the concepts of identity, “perception” and “self-perception”.
Students will choose one of the following handbooks:
· Lilla Crisafulli e Keir Elam (a cura di), Manuale di letteratura e cultura inglese, Bologna, Bononia University Press, 2009, pp. 181-489.
· Harry Blamires, A Short History of English Literature, London, Routledge, 2013, pp. 231-423.
Texts and Materials
Methodology
Students will read
· Tim Youngs, The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2013, pp. 50-177.
B. Italian Migrant Communities in Scotland: Perceptions and Self-Perceptions (3 ECTS)
Primary Texts
Students will study the given extracts and will read one of these works in full:
The relevant information about the above-mentioned authors and works will be found in the PPT presentation, also in critical essays, which will be made available in electronic form and on STUDIUM.
Critical Essays
Students will read
Subjects | Text References | |
---|---|---|
1 | Module A - Writing Italy: Fiction and Travel | The English literature handbook from the Victorian Age to contemporary times |
2 | Texts | Extracts from C. Dickens, ''Pictures from Italy'', E.M. Forster, ''A Room with a View'', M. Spark, ''Territorial Rights'' and J. Morris, ''Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere'' |
3 | Historical background and authors' bio | The PPT presentation/s and the critical essays on the chosen classics |
4 | Module B - Italian Migrant Communities in Scotland | Extracts from J. Pieri, "Isle of the Displaced...", A.M. Di Mambro, "Tally's Blood", M. Contini, "Dear Olivia" and A. Pia, "Language of My Choosing" |
5 | Methodology | T. Young, "The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing" (selected parts) |
6 | Module B - Italian Migrant Communities in Scotland | Extracts from J. Pieri, "Isle of the Displaced...", A.M. Di Mambro, "Tally's Blood", M. Contini, "Dear Olivia" and A. Pia, "Language of My Choosing" |
They will be expected to translate the chosen extracts into Italian.
A written test will be given at the end of Module A.
Travel literature in late modern and contemporary Britain: formal features and themes.
- Charles Dickens and his vision of Rome in Pictures from Italy
- Travel as an opportunity of individual growth in E.M. Forster’s A Room With a View.
- Italian immigration in Britain: historical phases and development.
The Arandora Star tragedy in Italian Scottish literary accounts: from Joe Pieri to Anne Pia.