Reccomended or required readings
PRIMARY SOURCES:
Students will read FIVE novels, in English, choosing two novels from group a), two novels from group b), and one novel from group c).
Group a).
Daniel Defoe, The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719).
Jonathan Swift, Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver (1726)
Samuel Richardson, Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740)
Henry Fielding, The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews (1742)
Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759-1767)
Ann Radcliffe, The Italian, or the Confessional of the Black Penitents (1797)
Group b).
William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair: A Novel without a Hero (1847-1848)
Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre. An Autobiography (1847)
Elizabeth Gaskell, North & South (1855)
Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White (1859-1860)
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations (1860-1861)
George Eliot, Middlemarch. A Study of Provincial Life (1871-71)
Group c).
Walter Besant and James Rice, Ready-Money Mortyboy, 1872
H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang, The World’s Desire, 1890
Helen Mathers, Justin McCarthy, Mrs. Trollope, Arthur Conan Doyle, May Crommelin, F.C. Philips, ‘Rita’, Joseph Hatton, Mrs. Lovett Cameron, Bram Stoker, Florence Marryat, Frank Danby, Mrs. Edward Kennard, Richard Dowling, Mrs. Hungerford, Arthur A’Beckett, Jean Middlemass, Clement Scott, Clo. Graves, H.W. Lucy, Adeline Sergeant, G. Manville Fenn, ‘Tasma’, and F. Anstey, The Fate of Fenella, 1892
Somerville and Ross, The Real Charlotte, 1894
SECONDARY SOURCES:
Chapter 4 of Rosamaria Loretelli, L'invenzione del romanzo: dall'oralità alla lettura silenziosa (2010), pp. 124-183.
Michael McKeon, "Generic Transformation and Social Change: Rethinking the Rise of the Novel", Cultural Critique 1 (1985), pp. 159-181.
“Introduction”, in Terry Eagleton, The English Novel. An Introduction (2005), pp. 1-21.
“Introduction”, in Gail Marshall, Victorian Fiction (2002), pp. 1-18.
Kate Flint, “The Victorian Novel and its Readers”, in Deirdre David (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Victorian Novel (2000), pp. 17-34.
Essays 2-5 are included in the Materials on sale at CLU bookshop.
NON-ATTENDING STUDENTS
Non-attending students will read SIX novels instead of five. Furthermore, non-attending students are required to add the following:
Manuale di letteratura e cultura inglese (2009):
- Lia Guerra, “Il romanzo del Settecento”, pp. 143-153.
- Beatrice Battaglia, “La narrativa nell'età delle rivoluzioni”, pp. 219-239.
- Susan Payne, “Il romanzo vittoriano”, pp. 283-295.
“Introduction”, in John Richetti, The English Novel in History, 1700-1780 (1999), pp. 1-16.
“Chapter 1. Critics and Theorists”, in John Skinner, An Introduction to Eighteenth-century Fiction: Raising the Novel (2001), pp. 3-28.
Fiona Robertson, “Novels”, in I. McCalman (ed.), An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age (1999), pp. 286-295.
Simon Eliot, “The Business of Victorian Publishing”, in Deirdre David (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Victorian Novel (2000), pp. 37-60.
All students (both attending and non-attending) are required to prepare the Materials for the course on sale at CLU bookshop.