Università Roma Tre

English Version
Instructor: Richard Ambrosini
Subject: Letteratura inglese I magistrale
CFU: 6
Semester: I & II

Wednesday 11:-13:00 (Aula 21)
Thursday 11:00-13:00 (Aula 3)
First Class: Wednesday October 7, 2015


Objectives:
Students are expected to acquire the advanced skills required to analyze complex texts and the literary phenomena of the Anglophone world viewed in a transcultural context, also in relation to translation and the teaching of literature. They are also expected to refine their ability to employ in a problematic manner the sophisticated theoretical tools which will enable them to engage in a culturalist and linguistic analysis of texts and cultural phenomena, as well as in the analysis of the interrelations between literary language and other narrative forms.

Programme

The course will set out by attempting an historical and cultural synthesis of the different strands that went into the making of British Modernism, which was at the same time a transnational phenomenon and a crucial passage in the history of English literature. The study of some of the major Modernist poets’ and novelists’ main texts will serve the purpose of casting light on the theoretical significance of the formal and stylistic experimentations that went into their making. This way, it will become possible to then understand the role those theories played once an institutionalized version of ‘Modernism’ became the foundation of the academic teaching of English literature.

Prescribed reading

Essays
Henry James, “The Art of Fiction” (1884) R. L. Stevenson, “A Humble Remonstrance” (1884)
Joseph Conrad, “Preface” to The Nigger of the “Narcissus” (1897), selection from his letters
T. S. Eliot, “Tradition and the Individual Talent” (1919), “Ulysses, Order and Myth” (1923)
D. H. Lawrence, “Surgery for the Novel – or, a Bomb” (1923)
Virginia Woolf, “Modern Fiction” (1919), “Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown” (1923)
E. M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel (1927) [Extracts]

Fiction

Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim (1900)
D. H. Lawrence, “Odour of Chrysanthemums” (1911)
James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)
Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (1927)
E. M. Forster, A Passage to India (1924)

Poems
Thomas Hardy, Selection from Poems of 1912-13
W. B. Yeats, “Easter, 1916” (1916), “The Wild Swans at Coole” (1917), “Sailing to Byzantium” (1928)
T. S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (1915), The Waste Land (1922)
Ezra Pound, “A Few Don’ts by an Imagiste” (1913), “In a Station of the Metro” (1913), “Homage to Sextus Propertius” (1919)


Reading List
Students are required to study on their own one of the following novels:

D. H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers (1913)
Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier (1915)

Criticism and Historical Background

A list of secondary texts will be available in early October.

The course will be held in English.

Students who do not plan to attend classes should come and speak to the instructor during his office hours (Tuesday, 14:30-16:30)

Essays
Henry James, “The Art of Fiction” (1884) R. L. Stevenson, “A Humble Remonstrance” (1884)
Joseph Conrad, “Preface” to The Nigger of the “Narcissus” (1897), e una selezione dall’epistolario
T. S. Eliot, “Tradition and the Individual Talent” (1919), “Ulysses, Order and Myth” (1923)
D. H. Lawrence, “Surgery for the Novel – or, a Bomb” (1923)
Virginia Woolf, “Modern Fiction” (1919), “Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown” (1923)
E. M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel (1927) [Estratti]

Fiction
Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim (1900)
D. H. Lawrence, “Odour of Chrysanthemums” (1911)
James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)
Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (1927)
E. M. Forster, A Passage to India (1924)

Poems
Thomas Hardy, una scelta di poesie tratte dalla raccolta Poems of 1912-13
W. B. Yeats, “Easter, 1916” (1916), “The Wild Swans at Coole” (1917), “Sailing to Byzantium” (1928)
T. S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (1915), The Waste Land (1922)
Ezra Pound, “A Few Don’ts by an Imagiste” (1913), “In a Station of the Metro” (1913), “Homage to Sextus Propertius” (1919)

Reading List

E. M. Forster, Howards End (1910)
D. H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers (1913)