AIMS AND CONTENT

AIMS AND LEARNING OUTCOMES

Students who attend this course regularly and study the assigned texts

• know some aspects of the late 19th-early 20th century reflection on the experience of the modern metropolis;
• know significant historical-critical studies on the representation of London;
• know analytically a small corpus of literary texts of the period, can describe their main themes and formal features, and relate them to specific historical and cultural contexts;
• are able to make use of insights and ideas offered by critical studies.

TEACHING METHODS

Lectures in English interspersed with activities aimed at encouraging active participation in class. 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 to introduce students to the study of the literature about London in the1880s-1920s. The starting point of the course is Edgar Allan Poe's "The Man of the Crowd", and the experience of the flâneur as described by Baudelaire, which inspired the urban journeys of much of the London literature of the period. The course focuses on a selection of texts by writers who have represented the experience of walking/surveying the metropolis, ranging from members of the late Victorian avant-garde (impressionists, decadent aesthetes, New Woman fiction-writers) to modernist authors such as T.S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf.

RECOMMENDED READING/BIBLIOGRAPHY

All students will have to study a selection of critical articles, contextual materials, and the following literary texts:

• E.A. Poe, The Man of the Crowd (1840)
• Henry James, "London" (1888)
• George Egerton/Mary Chavelita Dunne, “The Lost Masterpiece” (1894)
• Charlotte Mew, “Passed” (1894)
• T. S. Eliot, Preludes (1917), The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1917), The Waste Land (1922)
• V. Woolf, Mrs Dalloway (1925) (recommended edition: Penguin Classics).

With the exception of Woolf's novel, all the above materials will be made available on aulaweb.

TEACHERS AND EXAM BOARD

LESSONS

LESSONS START

Classes will be held in the second semester, starting in February.

Class schedule

ENGLISH LITERATURE AND CULTURE MOD.2

EXAMS

EXAM DESCRIPTION

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

Students who attend regularly and actively will be able to opt for alternative forms of assessment on selected parts 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. 

FURTHER INFORMATION

• Attendance is strongly recommended. At the beginning of the course students will have to enroll in AulaWeb. Enrollment for exams is online (www.unige.it).
• This syllabus is valid till July 2026.
• Students who have valid certification of physical or learning disabilities on file with the University and who wish to discuss possible accommodations or other circumstances regarding lectures, coursework and exams, should speak both with the instructors and with Prof. Sara Dickinson (sara.dickinson@unige.it), the Department’s disability liaison.