OVERVIEW

This is a 6-credit course taught in English in the second semester. It is intended for second-year TTMI students. It introduces to aspects of nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century literature, focusing on the development of poetic forms from Romanticism to early modernism.

AIMS AND CONTENT

LEARNING OUTCOMES

BA courses aim 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.

AIMS AND LEARNING OUTCOMES

Students who attend this course regularly and study the prescribed materials

1. know the general trends of development of English literature from the Age of Romanticism to Modernism;
2. know aspects of the period’s poetry and poetic theories;
3. know analytically a small corpus of poems by some of the major authors of the period, can describe their main themes and formal features, and relate them to specific historical and cultural contexts;
4. are able to make use of cues and ideas offered by critical materials.

PREREQUISITES

An intermediate-advanced knowledge of English to follow classes and read materials in English; an acquaintance with literary periodization as customarily deployed in the study of European literatures.

TEACHING METHODS

Lectures in English interspersed with activities aimed at encouraging active participation in class work. Attendance is highly recommended. Students who are unable to attend will have to refer to an ad-hoc reading list.

SYLLABUS/CONTENT

This course aims at introducing students to the study of English literature of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It especially focuses on poetry and its development, from the romantics (Prof. Colombino), to the Victorians (Prof. Villa), to the early-modernist avant-garde (Prof. Michelucci)

RECOMMENDED READING/BIBLIOGRAPHY

All students will have to study a selection of texts and poetical manifestos by a variety of authors (Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, Browning, Ch. Rossetti, Swinburne, Pound, T.S. Eliot) which will be made available on aulaweb. They will also have to study some critical and contextual materials, as well as the literary history of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (reference book: John Peck and Martin Doyle, A Brief History of English Literature, Palgrave, 2002, or any later edition, ch. 9-14).

Students are expected to choose and read  a novel among the following:

George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

TEACHERS AND EXAM BOARD

Exam Board

STEFANIA MICHELUCCI (President)

DOMENICO LOVASCIO

LUISA VILLA (President Substitute)

LAURA COLOMBINO (Substitute)

LESSONS

LESSONS START

Februar 16,  2023, Room E (Prof. Colombino)

Office hours: 

Prof. Colombino: by appointment, DLCM, Piazza Santa Sabina, Vth floor

Prof. Villa: see the Professor webpage at https://lingue.unige.it

Prof. Michelucci: by appointment, DLCM, Piazza Santa Sabina, Vth floor, during the second semester, from mid February to mid May 2023, on Wed. 9.30-10.30

Class schedule

ENGLISH LITERATURE AND CULTURE II

EXAMS

EXAM DESCRIPTION

This course is assessed by a 3-hour written examination in English. The open-ended-question exam paper covers all parts of the syllabus (literary history, poems and other texts commented in class; and the prescribed critical material). The final mark will result from the average of the marks related to the three parts (romanticism, Victorian age, modernism) of the syllabus.

ASSESSMENT METHODS

The exam paper involves open-ended questions (on the historical period, the cultural contexts, the main authors) and guided commentaries of literary texts. Open-ended questions test knowledge and comprehension; guided commentaries test the students’ ability to recognise and describe the main formal and thematic features of specific texts, and connect them to contextual historical and cultural information; it also tests the students’ comprehension of, and ability to respond to, the critical essays included in the reading list.

Exam schedule

FURTHER INFORMATION

Attendance is highly recommended. Students who are unable to attend will have to study some supplementary or different material. Subscription to the course via aulaweb is mandatory.

This syllabus is valid until July 2024.

Students diagnosed with DSA should contact the professors to discuss an appropriate approach to the exam.