ENGLISH LITERATURE 2

This course is an introduction to the major artistic and literary phenomena of 19th Century England, also considered with reference to the European context. It is addressed to students of the literary-cultural Curriculum of LCSL, and it will build upon their knowledge in the field of study acquired in the previous year. The study of novels and essays will enhance their skills in textual analysis, in understanding historical and cultural contexts, and in the acquisition of critical language. Classes will be mostly taught in English and the students’ active participation will be encouraged.

The study of novels and essays will enhance the student's skills in textual translation and comprehension, in textual analysis, in understanding historical and cultural contexts, and in the acquisition of critical language. The students’ active participation in class will be encouraged. During the module students can write a 2500-word essay on a non compulsory basis to enhance their critical skills in written English.

A good knowledge of English, enabling the student to read and translate literay texts.

Public and domestic spaces in the Victorian Novel

The course explores the form of the Victorian novel and its development in the 1850s in Britain, accounting for the rapid social changes that involved the industrial society and the relationships between social classes, genders, and regions. We shall study some novels written in the decade 1847-1857 with female protagonists, and some essays on the industrial context. We shall deal in particular with the representation of spaces (i.e. the factory, the countryside, the city, the home, the prison, abroad) that underwent radical transformations, for their narrative implications and as modes of self representatation.

1. The literary context:
Philip Davis, The Victorians, Oxford: OUP, 2001 (capitoli 5 e 7: “Conditions of Literary Production”; “Variety in the Early Victorian Novel”)

2.a Novels to be read in the original (Penguin Classics oe equivalent):
Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton
Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit

2.b Passages from:
Elizabeth Gaskell, Life of Charlotte Bronte
Charles Dickens, Hard Times
Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South
Friederich Engels, The Condition of the Working-Class in England 1844

3. Further reading:
James Buzard, “The Fiction of Autoethnography”, Disorienting Fiction. The Autoethnographic Work of Nineteenth-Century British Novels, Princeton UP, 2005, pp. 37-59.

4. W. Shakespeare, Hamlet

I materiali di approfondimento presentati a lezione saranno caricati durante il corso nella piattaforma Moodle.

The written exam will be on the following topics:

1. the Victorian Context
2. comment on a passage taken from one of the novels
3. translation of a passage from a novel
4. paragraph writing on one of the novels (in English)
5. An aspect of Shakespeare’s Hamlet

Guided lectures, Close reading, translation, discussion seminars, lectures by guest speakers.

All material will be available on the Moodle platform.

Students who will be unable to attend classes are asked to contact me at the beginning of the course.

written

This subject deals with topics related to the macro-area "Poverty and inequalities" and contributes to the achievement of one or more goals of U. N. Agenda for Sustainable Development