Title: Literary imagination and the First World War in Great Britain.
The course will examine the variety of literary and artistic responses to World War I and its impact upon modern British poetry.
The course aims to provide students with a basic knowledge of British literature and culture from the Renaissance to the present age with special emphasis on the development of modern fiction, post-colonial studies, twentieth-century modernism and post-modernism.
Students who attend this course regularly, and study the prescribed materials, will acquire a detailed knowledge of the development of British poetry from World War I into post-war England. They will be able to analyze a number of British literary texts, describe their main formal features and connect them to specific historical and cultural contexts.
Interactive lectures in Italian and a few workshops on specific themes.
This course provides the students with an introduction to the study of British poetry in the first half of the 20th Century. The first part of the course will offer an historical-cultural survey of the main poetic traditions and of the most influential poets of the period showing how they develop their own unique styles and concerns. The course will retrace the crucial phases of the critical debate around the construction and reception of the canon and will show how discussions about the poetic production of war poets have been subject to opposed ideological readings and heated debates over the role, function and language of poetry. The remaining lectures will be dedicated to the analysis of some literary texts.
A list of poems, critical and reference texts will be provided at the beginning of the course. At the exam students are expected to know the history of 20th century British literature.
MARIA RITA CIFARELLI (President)
STEFANIA MICHELUCCI (President)
LAURA COLOMBINO
LUISA VILLA
This course is assessed by written examination. Language of examination: Italian or English. The exam paper covers all parts of the syllabus.
The exam paper involves open questions and guided commentary of literary texts. The open questions test knowledge and comprehension; the guided commentary tests the student's ability to recognize and describe the main formal features of specific texts, and connect them to contextual historical and cultural information; it also tests the student's comprehension of, and ability to respond to, critical essays included in the reading list.
Attendance is strongly recommended. Students must enroll in the course via Aulaweb and online (www.unige.it) for the exams.
This programme expires at the end of February 2018.
