Learning objectives
To give the students the opportunity to know the development of English literature from 1660 to the end of the 19th century by looking at some representative texts and analysing the socio-cultural contexts in which they were produced. To provide the students with the theoretical and critical tools necessary to approach the literary discourse, as well as to read and discuss any literary topic autonomously.
Course unit content
Thematic itineraries in English Literature from the Restoration to the End of the 19th century
The course aims at introducing and illustrating the development of English literature from the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 to the end of the 19th century. The methodological approach consists of devising specific thematic itineraries investing the whole period in question, by selecting for each of them some representative texts. Each of these examples will be first examined within the historical-cultural context in which it was produced, and then in its formal and conceptual features. Ultimately, the course intends to guide the students along a complex literary path, certainly heterogeneous and hardly definable according to fixed paradigms but, at the same time, marked by essential and crucial moments and fils rouges that will allow the students to see the connections and evolving processes characterising the period under examination.
Full programme
English literature (2010-011)
II anno Laurea Triennale
Dott.ssa Gioia Angeletti
A) Primary texts
* = from Norton Anthology
1) London/Londons (Dickens + 2 poems out of your choice)
*William Blake, London
*William Wordsworth, Composed Upon Westminster Bridge
Charles Dickens, Bleak House
James Thomson, The City of Dreadful Night (extracts) [photocopy office and LEA online course]
2) Joy and Melancholy (2 poems out of your choice)
*William Wordsworth, My heart leaps up
*John Keats, Ode on Melancholy
*Alfred Tennyson, Ulysses
3) The beautiful and the sublime (2 poems out of your choice)
*William Blake, The Tyger
*William Wordsworth, I wondered lonely as a cloud
*S. T. Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (extracts)
4) Subconscious depths(2 novels out of your choice)
Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy (1760-67) [solo primi due volumi]
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
*Robert Stevenson, Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
5) Class / Gender / Race (the 2 poems and 1 novel out of your choice)
*Aphra Behn, Oroonoko
*Alexander Pope & Anne Finch, “Impromptu to Lady Winchilsea” & “The Answer”
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
B) Material available at lea.unipr.it
C) Secondary texts (3 out of your choice)*
Gioia Angeletti, Eccentric Scotland: Three Victorian Poets, pp. 15-34, pp. 37-44, 93-121.
Isobel Armstrong, Victorian Poetry: Poetry, Poetics and Politics, pp. 1-21, 94-111, 381-401, 460-478.
Patrick Brantlinger and William B. Thesing, eds, A Companion to the Victorian Novel, pp. 67-83, 84-100, 172-187, 302-317,
J. Bristow, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Victorian Poetry, pp. 1-22, 67-88, 180-200, 280-298.
James Chandler and Kevin Gilmartin, eds, Romantic Metropolis : the Urban Scene of the British Culture, 1780-1840, pp. 1-41, 65-82, 113-131, 246-260.
D. Deirdre, ed., The Cambridge Companion to the Victorian Novel, pp. 1-16, 61-76, 97-124, 159-166, 205-211.
Jerrold E. Hogle, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction, pp. 1-19, 21-39, 85-104, 189-207.
Robin Jarvis, The Romantic Period: the Intellectual and Cultural Context of English Literature, 1789-1830, pp. 1-18, 74-92, 124-142, 173-192.
Gary Kelly, English Fiction of the Romantic Period: 1789-1830, pp. 1-21, 42-59, 111-138, 251-273.
R.E. Pritchard, ed, Dickens's England: Life in Victorian Times, pp. 5-44, 179-216.
Jane Stabler, Burke to Byron, Barbauld to Baillie: 1790-1830, pp. 99-157, 180-182
Steven N. Zwicker, ed., The Cambridge Companion to English Literature 1650-1740, pp. 3-16, 24-32, 33-57, 225-249.
*All texts available in the library of the Department of Languages
Bibliography
The Norton Anthology of English Literature, voll. I e II (introductory sections to each period and to the authors and texts in the programme)
L. M. Crisafulli e E. Keir (a cura di) Manuale di letteratura e cultura inglese (Bononia UP 2009) (in particular the following sections and chapters: Il Settecento: Introduzione; Il romanzo del Settecento; Il Romanticismo: Introduzione; La poesia del Romanticismo; La narrativa nell’età delle rivoluzioni (1780-1830); Il teatro romantico; La critica romantica; Introduzione: I Vittoriani; Il romanzo vittoriano; L’estetismo: Pater e Wilde; La New Woman; La poesia vittoriana; Il teatro vittoriano; Il viaggio in Italia; Esotismo e Orientalismo; Critica e teoria letteraria inglese).
Teaching methods
Lectures and class discussion on the selected texts of the course.
