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 how literary characters are shaped through narrative points of view with a particular attention on ho the I/he/she comes forward in his/her relationship with the other(s), with him/herself, with his/her interiority from Elizabethan times to the Twentieth century.

William Shakespeare, Macbeth (any bilingual edition);
Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (any unabridged edition)
George Eliot, The Lifted Veil / Il velo sollevato (Marsilio bilingual edition)
Joseph Conrad, The Secret Sharer / Il compagno segreto (any bilingual edition)
Virginia Woolf, The Lady in the Looking-Glass (provided by the teacher)
Samuel Beckett, Not I / Non io (provided by the teacher)

History of literature: P. Bertinetti (a cura di), Storia della letteratura inglese, vol. I-II, chapters indicated by the teacher, Einaudi, 2000;
or
A. Sanders, The Short Oxford History of English Literature, chapters indicated by the teacher, Clarendon Press, 1994.

Selected bibliography: it will be posted in the teacher's website.

Through the reading of a selection of novels written between the 1830's and the present, the course will explore the many ways in which Anglophone culture has given expression to the European Bildungsroman. With the aid of critical and anthropological theorization, and of feminist studies, the course will investigate four "coming of age" novels and the different ways in which their authors have represented the crucial passage from childhood or adolescence to adult life. Within the course we will watch a selection of film adaptations of some of the novels considered and will investigate what happens to a story when it travels across media.

Literary texts:
Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist (1838), Oxford World's Classics 2008 (suggested edition);
Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out (1915), Oxford World's Classics 2009 (suggested edition);
Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit (1985) (any English edition);
Hanif Kureishi, The Buddha of Suburbia (1990) (any English edition).

Films:
to be announced.

Secondary readings (provided by the instructor):
Buckley, J. H. Season of Youth: The Bildungsroman from Dickens to Golding, Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1974 (selected chapters).
Abel, E., M. Hirsch, and E. Langland, eds. The Voyage In: Fictions of Female Development. Hanover and London: University Press of New England, 1983 (selected chapters).
Extra secondary readings will be announced later.

History of English literature (textbook):
P. Bertinetti (a cura di), Breve storia della letteratura inglese, Einaudi 2004.

During the course, the students will learn how to read a number of classics of English literature, dating from the Renaissance to early 20th century. The main emphasis will be on testing the main interpretive tools required to analyze the texts’ form and languages; just as important, however, will be the attempts that will be made to locate these texts within the English literary tradition by investigating their historical and cultural significance

Drama
William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar (1599), trad. A. Lombardo, Feltrinelli

Poetry
JJohn Donne, “Farewell Forbidding Mourning” (1611)
George Herbert, “Love III” (1633)
John Milton, “On the Late Massacre in Piedmont” (1655)
William Wordsworth, “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” (1807), “Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802” (1807)
William Blake, “Tyger”
P.B. Shelley, “Ode to the West Wind” (1820)
John Keats, “Ode to a Nightingale” (1819),
Lord Byron, “On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year” (1824)
Thomas Hardy, “The Convergence of the Twain” (1912)
W. B. Yeats, “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death” (1919)
Ezra Pound, “In a Station of the Metro” (1913)
W. H. Auden, “Funeral Blues”(1938)
Dylan Thomas, “Do not go gentle into that good night” (1951)
Philip Larkin, “Church Going” (1954)
Derek Walcott, “The Castaway” (1965)
Seamus Heaney, “Digging” (1966)

Fiction
(novel) Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818), qualsiasi edizione
(novella) Joseph Conrad, “Heart of Darkness” (1899), a cura di G. Sertoli, Einaudi
(short story) D. H. Lawrence, “Odour of Chrysantemums” (1911)
(novel) J. M. Coetzee, Vergogna/Disgrace (1999)

Notes: The course will be taught in Italian. The literary texts used will be in English, but their Italian translations will be allowed. Students who cannot attend the course should inform the teacher about their situation as soon as possible. Extra-readings might be assigned according to their needs.