ENGLISH LITERATURE 3

This third-year course aims to perfect the skills gained in the first two years of the BA course in Lingue, Civiltà e Scienze del Linguaggio (literary and cultural path) and to strengthen the students’ basic knowledge of the history of English literature and culture. It will therefore focus on the early modern period (16th and 17th centuries), and will enhance the knowledge of the main literary phenomena within their historical and cultural (artistic, philosophical, epistemic) contexts.

The course aims to improve the students’ ability to use analytic instruments and methods, as well as to make autonomous judgements. The course, also in view of the writing of their BA dissertation and of further study, will enhance their skills in academic writing and in oral communication of the results of their research.

Classes will be held in English. Students must therefore be able to understand and critically discuss literary and cultural topics of the English Renaissance.

The Poetry of John Donne
The course will deal with the works of one of the greatest English poets of the early modern period, John Donne. Considered as the most important of the Metaphysical Poets, Donne was a precursor of later seventeenth century sensibility: his style, his metaphorical inventiveness, his far-fetched imagery have always been at the centre of critical debate, and of the twentieth-century revival of interest for his verse.
Both his profane and religious poetry will be analysed, and studied in relation to the cultural context in which it is embedded (Renaissance worldview, cosmology, poetics, rhetoric and logic, love theories).

Primary text:
John Donne's Poetry, Norton Critical Edition, edited by A. L. Clements, New York-London, Norton & Co.

Secondary texts:
3 Essays among those included in the Section Criticism of the Norton edition.

2 books to be selected among the following:
John Donne, edited by A. Mousley, New Casebooks, Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1999
John Donne: Essays in Celebration, edited by A.J. Smith, London, Methuen, 1972
M. Roston, The Soul of Wit, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1974
M.A Rugoff, Donne’s Imagery, New York, Russell & Russell, 1966 (1939)
W. Sanders, John Donne’s Poetry, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1971
T. G. Sherwood, Fulfilling the Circle, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1984
R. Targoff, John Donne: Body and Soul, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2008

Students will also study:
W. Shakespeare, King Lear (edizione consigliata: Arden Shakespeare).

Students will have to sit an oral exam to prove they know both the primary and the secondary texts of the programme. They will also have to show they have acquired 1) a good knowledge of the cultural and historical contexts of the early modern period; 2) the capacity to use appropriate tools of textual analysis, and 3) the skill to make autonomous judgments on the texts analyzed. The exam will be in English.

15 two-hour classes, one per week. Supplementary material will be provided on line.

Italian

Students who cannot attend at least 2/3 of the classes are expected to study also the following texts:
A. Serpieri, "Sull'uso del modello comunicativo nella poesia di John Donne: The Funerall e The Relique" in Strumenti critici, IX, 1975, pp. 275-308.
J. Donne, Poesie, a cura di S. Serpieri e S. Bigliazzi, BUR, Biblioteca Universale Rizzoli, 2009.
James S. Baumlin, John Donne and the Rhetorics of Renaissance Discourse, Columbia, University of Missouri Press, 199.

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