Università Roma Tre

This course provides an overview of English literature through the study of a variety of texts by some of the most representative authors of the British canon. The course will focus on topics, contexts and textual strategies with a view to underlining the literary representation of childhood/adolescence and its interaction with culture.

Literary texts:
Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist (any unabridged English edition);
James Joyce, a selection from Dubliners (provided by the teacher)
J. M. Coetzee, The Childhood of Jesus (any unabridged English edition)

Critical essays: a list of essays on the above authors/texts will be provided during the course. References will be available on my website.

Reading list (one of your choice):
1. Joseph Conrad, The Shadow Line
2. Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
3. Selection of Victorian poetry: Alfred Tennyson, Ulysses; Robert Browning, My Last Duchess; Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnets from the Portuguese: sonnets 1 and 43; Rudyard Kipling, The White Man’s Burden (if you make this choice you have to read all the poems)
4. Virginia Woolf, “Modern Fiction” and Mrs Dalloway
5. Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

Literary history (one of your choice):
P. Bertinetti (ed.), Storia della letteratura inglese, vol. II, chap. II-III-IV, Einaudi, 2000
or
A. Sanders, The Short Oxford History of English Literature, chap. 7-8-9, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1994.

Optional readings:

Textual analysis (one of your choice):
Roland Bourneuf, Réal Ouellet, L’universo del romanzo, Torino, Einaudi 1976 (I ed. 1972) or
Gérard Genette, Figure III. Discorso del racconto, Torino, Einaudi 1976 [I ed. 1972] or
Roland Barthes, L’analisi del racconto, Milano, Bompiani, 2002 [I ed. 1969], or
Angelo Marchese, L’officina del racconto. Semiotica della narratività, Milano, Mondadori, 1990 [I ed. 1983] , or
Loredana Chines, Carlo Varotti, Che cos’è un testo letterario, Roma, Carocci, 2001

Instructor: Richard Ambrosini
Subject: English Literature I (LTI) surnames R to Z
CFU: 6
Semester: II


Objectives:
Students will develop a good knowledge of the literature and culture of Anglophone countries from the Victorian Age to the present day. The course will introduce students to the most significant critical approaches of literary theory with particular emphasis on the specificities of literary language and on the intertextual, intermedial, intercultural aspects of a good range of literary texts. Students will develop an ability to critically engage with literary works and their cultural and historical contexts.

Programme

The course will introduce students to a number of texts which exemplify the variety of narrative forms as well as the transformations which have shaped English occurred 1848-1999 during the period covered by the course.

Prescribed reading

Fiction
Charles Dickens, “The Haunted Man” (1848)
Joseph Conrad, “The Secret Sharer” (1910)
Hanif Kureishi, “My Son the Fanatic” (1994)
J. M. Coetzee, Disgrace (1999)

Drama
Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot (1953)

Poetry
The exam programme includes the following nineteenth- and twentieth century poems, which will be made available before the course starts. At the end of the course the instructor will prepare for non-attending students a critical guide to a selection of these poems.

- Alfred Tennyson, Ulysses;
- Robert Browning, My Last Duchess;
- Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach;
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnets from the Portuguese: sonnets 1 and 43;
- Rudyard Kipling, The White Man’s Burden;
- Thomas Hardy, The Convergence of the Twain (Lines on the loss of the Titanic);
- T. S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock;
- Ezra Pound, In a Station of the Metro;
- W. B. Yeats, Leda and the Swan;
- W. H. Auden, Funeral Blues;
- Dylan Thomas, Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night;
- Philip Larkin, Church Going.

Reading List

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

- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1889)/Il ritratto di Dorian Gray (Feltrinelli, 2013)
- E. M. Forster, A Passage to India (1924) /Passaggio in India (Mondadori, 2001)

Criticism and Historical Background

A list of materials will be available after the summer.

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

Narrativa
Charles Dickens, The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain. A Fancy for Christmas Time (1848),
ed. bilingue, L’invasato e il patto del fantasma (Marsilio, 2005, 2013)
Joseph Conrad, “The Secret Sharer” (1910), ed. bilingue, Marsilio, 2007.
Hanif Kureishi, “My Son the Fanatic” (1994), in Love in a Blue Time, Faber 1997 / Bompiani 2001.
J. M. Coetzee, Disgrace (1999), ed. Vintage, 2000 / Vergogna, Einaudi, 2014.

Teatro
Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot (1953)