2017/2018

2017/2018

DM270

L-LIN/10 (ENGLISH LITERATURE)

DEPARTMENT OF HUMANITIES

LITERATURES OF EUROPE AND THE AMERICAS

PERCORSO COMUNE

1°

1st semester (25/09/2017 - 10/01/2018)

9

54 lesson hours

English

ORAL TEST

GUERRA LIA SIMONETTA (titolare) - 9 ECTS

The course is devoted to first year students (9 CFU) and also to second year students (6 CFU) of the Master in Foreign Languages and Literatures who have studied English literature during their BA.
All students are expected to be familiar with the main texts of eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth century English Literature. They should also be able to use the Engish language fluently, at least at a B2 level. It is also desirable that students both attending and not attending the lessons should know the main historical events regarding the British world.

The main aim of the course is to investigate some areas of literary criticism, poetics, textual analysis and/or historical and cultural contexts in order to enable students to master an author, a genre or a literary period with critical awareness. Thus the main bibliographical instruments will be illustrated together with the best way to use them. A secondary aim is to offer an instance of how critical literary topics can be addressed so that students can handle proper methods of analysis and be able to work independently when facing their final dissertation.

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.

Lectures and oral presentations by the students.
The first part of the course (6CFU) will be covered by the teacher's lessons, while the last 3 CFU (for first year students only) will have a seminar approach including students' presentations.

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)

The exam is oral. It is organized as an interview (totally in English) where the students will be asked to prove their knowledge of the primary and secondary texts included in the Bibliography, their understanding of all the English texts discussed in class and their full ability to grasp the import of the critical essays. Since the topic developed in the course spans over a long chronological period, students will have to prove able to move easily in the different sections with logical and analytical competence. Linguistic proficiency is part of the evaluation. First year students will be valued also on the basis of their oral presentation.

Atttendance is strongly recommended. However, students who, for different reasons, are not able to attend classes, are invited to get in touch with the teacher.