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 English expression. The course will focus on topics, contexts and textual strategies with a view to underlining the representation of the stranger/foreigner and the relationships between identity and otherness from the Elizabethan Age to the Twentieth century.

a. Literary texts:
William Shakespeare, The Tempest / La tempesta (any bilingual edition);
Daniel Defoe, The True Born Englishman / Il vero inglese (a selection indicated in class/website)
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness / Cuore di tenebra (any bilingual edition)
Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart / Il crollo (any unabridged edition)

Reading the classics: the "battle of the sexes" in the Great Tradition of English literature

The Taming of the Shrew di William Shakespeare, Pride and Prejudice di Jane Austen, Daniel Deronda di George Eliot, The Harsh Voice di Rebecca West
Text can be read in Italian, but the original version will be used in the classroom
It is mandatory to read the texts BEFORE the course starts.
A list of critical essays will be available at the beginning of the course.

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.

William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra (1607), trad. A. Lombardo (Feltrinelli), edizione bilingue

Henry James, The Turn of the Screw/Il giro di vite (1898), (Marsilio), edizione bilingue
Joseph Conrad, Typhoon/Tifone (1901) (Mursia o La vita felice), edizione bilingue
James Joyce, “Evelyne” e “A Painful Case”, da Dubliners (1914), in fotocopia
Graham Greene, The Quiet American (Penguin) o L'americano tranquillo (Mondadori)

Poesie
Selezione da tre poeti di lingua inglese del ’900: W. H. Auden, Philip Larkin e Derek Walcott.
Il docente preparerà una dispensa, che sarà disponibile ad ottobre

Reading list non frequentanti
Oltre ai romanzi studiati in classe, gli studenti non frequentanti dovranno leggerne un altro a scelta tra:
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, (1818)
Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (1847)

I non-frequentanti dovranno studiare la storia della letteratura inglese del Novecento.


Reading list
one of these two novels:
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, (1818)
Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (1847)

A selection of poems by W. H. Auden, Philip Larkin and Derek Walcott.

This course explores the theme of the master-servant relationship in two canonical English texts (William's Shakespeare The Tempest and Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe) and the metamorphoses of this theme across two celebrated rewritings of the Robinson-myth (Derek Walcott's Pantomime and J.M. Coetzee's Foe).

William Shakespeare, The Tempest (1611) (Arden or Penguin);
Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (1719) (Oxford World's Classics or Penguin Classics);
D. Walcott, Pantomime (1978);
J.M. Coetzee, Foe (1986).