Course contents
The course examines the autobiographical genre. During the first week a diachronical survey of its development will be offered, and the focus will then move onto the special quality autobiography takes in the novel until the dawn of Romanticism. The main object of enquiry providing a case study will be Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, in the 1818 edition. To this the remaing weeks will be devoted. Shelley's text will be read as autofiction and as a strongly and complex intertextual novel, highlighting in particular its connextions with Milton's Paradise Lost. In the final part of the course (+ 3 CFU) first year students will have to work on a contemporary instance of serial autofiction by postcolonial writer Jamaica Kincaid, discussing individual presentations in class on specific aspects analysed during the course and reworked either individually or in pairs in connection with Kincaid's production.
Reccomended or required readings
Primary sources:
Mary Shelley (1994) Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus. The 1818 text. Edited with Introduction and Notes by Marilyn Butler, World's Classics. OUP.
John Milton (1667) Paradise Lost (any edition) . Passages from the poem will be discussed in class and texts provided on Kiro platform.
(to be consulted in the library) Bennett. B. (Ed.). (1980-1988). The Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
(to be consulted in the library) Feldman, P. R., & Scott-Kilvert, D. (1987). The Journals of Mary Shelley, 1814-1844. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
For first year students only:
Jamaica Kincaid, (1983) Annie John, Vintage 1997
Jamaica Kincaid, (1990) Lucy, Plume Books Penguin 1991.
Secondary sources:
on the genre:
-Linda Anderson (2001) Autobiography, London, New York, Routledge.
-Autobiography: essays theoretical and critical (1980) ed. by James Olney, Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press. In particular see the following chapters:
Gusdorf, Georges "Conditions and Limits of Autobiography", pp.28-48;
Jean Starobinski "The Style of Autobiography," pp. 73-83.
on Mary Shelley:
-Sandra Gilbert, S.Gubar (1979), The Madwoman in the Attic , Yale University Press. pp.213-247
-Fisch, A. A., Mellor, A. K., & Schor, E. H. (Eds.). (1993). The Other Mary Shelley: Beyond Frankenstein. New York: Oxford University Press.
-Seymour, M. (2000). Mary Shelley. London: Picador. Or, Sunstein, E. W. (1989). Mary Shelley: Romance and Reality. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
on Jamaica Kincaid (first year students only):
-Diane Simmons, "Jamaica Kincaid and the Canon: In Dialogue with Paradise Lost and Jane Eyre" MELUS, Vol. 23, No. 2, Varieties of Ethnic Criticism (Summer, 1998), pp. 65-85 JSTOR
-Tarso do Amaral de Souza Cruz, "JAMAICA KINCAID – A SUBVERSIVE FALLEN ANGEL" Estudos Anglo Americanos, v. 45, nº 1 - 2016, pp.10-24
For students who do not/cannot attend classes:
the same program described above, plus:
-Lia Guerra. Il mito nell'opera di Mary Shelley Cooperativa Libraria Universitaria, Pavia, 1995, pp.7-19 e 83-111.
-Tim Fulford, "Science"; Andrew Michael Roberts, "Psychoanalysis", Nicola Trott "Gothic" in An Oxford Guide to Romanticism, ed by Nicholas Roe, OUP 2005, pp.90-101, 219-236, 482-501.
only for first year students:
-Diane Simmons, "The Rhythm of Reality in the Works of Jamaica Kincaid" World Literature Today 68.3 (Summer 1994): 466-472.
-David Yost, "A Tale of three Lucys: Wordsworth and Bronte in Kincaid's Antiguan Villette" Melus 31.2 (2006)