LEARNING OUTCOMES

MA literary courses involve lectures and workshops; they aim to provide students with an in-depth knowledge of aspects/moments in the history 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.

AIMS AND LEARNING OUTCOMES

Students who attend classes regularly and actively, and study the prescribed material,

- will increase their historical-cultural awareness of nineteenth-century literature and its transformations; 

-  will acquire an in-depth knowledge of fin de siècle literary culture, and of recent critical approaches to it;

- will be able to analyse the formal and thematic features of a circumscribed corpus of texts (shorter fictions) 

TEACHING METHODS

This is a distance learning course. Classes will be held on TEAMS and AULAWEB. It will include introductory lectures in English, and class activities on selected short stories and relevant critical material.  

SYLLABUS/CONTENT

The Late Nineteeth Century: The Shorter Fiction focuses on a selection of short stories and novellas produced by the esthetic-decadent avant-garde, ranging Vernon Lee's "fantastic stories" to Kipling's early tales, to the shorter fictions Henry James, Ernest Dowson and Arthur Symons. Its aim is to reflect on the role and features of Late Victorian shorter fiction, and on the fin de siècle themes and preoccupations that such fiction articulates.  

RECOMMENDED READING/BIBLIOGRAPHY

Students who choose to attend regularly and actively participate in class work will have to read the selection of short stories and critical materials that will be made available in aulaweb. 

The other students will have to read A) Arthur Symons' Spiritual Adventures, and B) one other collection of short stories (chosen among Ernest Dowson, Dilemmas; Rudyard Kipling, The Phantom Rickshaw and Other Tales; Henry James, Terminations) plus a series of critical materials on these works, and their literary and cultural context. Critical materials will be made available via aulaweb, and/or in the department library.