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 knowledge of nineteenth-century literary and cultural history;

-  will familiarise with Lord Byron's poetry and transgressive personality, and with a selection of texts produced during the Regency period and at the fin de siècle;

- will become aware of aspects of the critical debate on "celebrity culture", the "dandy" and the "vampire";

- will be able to analyse the formal and thematic features of a circumscribed corpus of texts.

TEACHING METHODS

This course will include introductory lectures in English, group work and class activities on selected literary texts and relevant critical material.  It will be taught on TEAMS.

SYLLABUS/CONTENT

This module surveys a selection of literary texts from the Regency period (by Byron, Caroline Lamb, Polidori, Edward Bulwer)  and the late Victorian/early modernist period (Max Beerbohm, Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker, Henry James).  It aims at highlighting the Regency's legacy to the modern imaginary. Its main focus is on the rise of celebrity culture, and the iconic figures of the "vampire" and the "dandy".

RECOMMENDED READING/BIBLIOGRAPHY

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

The other students will be allowed to choose between the standard reading list, or an alternative reading list that will cover the Regency/Byron/Celebrity (through a selection of texts and critical materials), plus one theme chosen between the "vampire" (from Polidori's The Vampyre to Bram Stoker's Dracula) or the "dandy" (from E. Bulwer's Pelham to Oscar Wilde & Max Beerbohm, texts to be defined). Critical and contextual materials will be made available in the Departmental library and/or on aulaweb.