LEARNING OUTCOMES

The courses involve lectures and workshops; they aim to provide students with a deep knowledge of British literature and culture from the Renaissance to the present age. Students will also learn and discuss all the critical and theoretical issues involved in the establishment of the literary canon and in its recent revisions.

LEARNING OUTCOMES (FURTHER INFO)

Students who attend classes regularly, and study the prescribed material, will increase their critical skills through an in-depth analysis of Samuel Beckett’s later dramatic works.  They will be able to analyse literary texts from different perspectives and will learn how to write short critical essays about them.

TEACHING METHODS

Interactive lectures in Italian and a few workshops on specific themes.

SYLLABUS/CONTENT

Beckett’s questioning of the fundamental codes of the theatre, his investigation of processes of perception and signification and his interest in music, art and technology will be analyzed in works written and produced for different media: theatre, radio, cinema and television. The course will examine how the progression from each of these performing spaces – from radio to film to television - contributed to a movement towards the fragmentation of characters’ bodies and a purer distillation of expression.

RECOMMENDED READING/BIBLIOGRAPHY

Students will have to study the following dramatic works:

Krapp’s Last Tape
Film
Eh Joe
Ghost Trio
…but the clouds…
Nacht und Träume
Quad
All that Fall

Not I
Footfalls
Rockaby

Critical bibliography: a list of critical texts will be provided at the beginning of the course.