ENGLISH LITERATURE FROM THE ENLIGHTENMENT TO THE END OF VICTORIANITY

 According to the Dublin descriptors, at the end of the course students will demonstrate:

1) Knowledge and Understanding

This course intends to present students with the main historical and literary trends in 1700-1800 England. The activities that will be carried out on the texts included in the syllabus will also enhance their comprehension skills.  

2) Applying Knowledge and Understanding

A considerable part of the course will be dedicated to close reading activities, which will help students to develop their literary appreciation tools, also to apply their knowledge of British history and culture in modern times.

 3) Making Judgement

Close reading activities will promote students’ ability to make judgement, also to establish stylistic and thematic relations among the texts included in the syllabus.

4) Communication Skills

Text analysis activities, as well as exchanges on the chosen texts will enhance students’ communication skills in English.

 5) Learning Skills

Students will develop a deeper awareness of their learning skills, which will result in a more mature and autonomous approach to literary texts.    

Module A – Literature and Culture: The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (7 ECTS)

Correct English pronunciation, translation, and in-depth analysis of the rhetorics, stylistics, and formal features of the 20 chosen texts/excerpts will be required at the exam:  

     1.     The Eighteenth Century

      a.    Principles and Ideas

      Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism (1709)

      Joseph Addison, The Aims of the “Spectator” (1711)

      Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)

      b.   Constructing and Deconstructing: The Rise of the Novel

      Samuel Richardson, Pamela, Or Virtue Rewarded (1740)

      Eliza Haywood, Anti-Pamela, Or Feign’d Innocence Detected (1741)

      Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy (1762)

      c.    Travels and The Grand Tour

      Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, The Turkish Embassy Letters (1762)

      Esther Lynch Piozzi, A Journey Through France, Italy and Germany (1789)

       d.   The Age of the Sublime and the Gothic 

       Anne Radcliffe, A Sicilian Romance (1790)

       Mattew Lewis, The Monk: A Romance (1796)

      2. The Early Nineteenth Century: The Romantic Age

a. Nature, Imagination and Egotism 

       William Blake, The Lamb (1789)

       William Wordsworth, “The Preface” to The Lyrical Ballads (1801) – Daffodils (1804)

       b. From Dissent to the Cult of History and Beauty 

       John Keats, The Elgin Marbles (1817)

       P.B. Shelley, Song: To the Men of England (1819)

       Walter Scott, Ivanhoe (1819)

3. The Victorian Age

a. Depicting Reality

Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton (1848)

Charles Dickens: Hard Times (1854) 

b. Forms of Escapism: The Past, Nonsense and Horror

Alfred Tennyson, Ulysses (1833)

Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865)

Bram Stoker, Dracula (1897)

Module B – Mysticism and Ekphrasis in Victorian Times: Dante Gabriel Rossetti (2 ECTS)    

This module will also include an introduction to the artistic and cultural activities of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (1848-1852) and of its leader Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The short story Hand and Soul, which appeared in the literary journal The Germ in 1850, will have to be read in full.       

Module A – Literature and Culture: The Eighteenth and the Nineteenth Centuries (7 ECTS)

1.  History of English Literature from the Enlightenment to the Victorian Age

Sanders, Andrew, The Short Oxford History of English Literature, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1994, pp. 273-483 [or third edition, 2004, pp. 276-491]. 

2. Anthology

For the historical and cultural contexts and notes to the texts/excerpts that will be analysed during the course, see

The Oxford Anthology of English Literature, vol. 2, New York, London and Toronto [latest edition].

The Norton Anthology of English Literature, vol. 2, New York and London [latest edition].

3.  Methodology and Literary Terms

Cuddon John Anthony, The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory, London, Penguin [latest ed.] (the complete list of the literary terms that will be used during the course will be made available in electronic form - ca. 20 pages).

 Module B – Mysticism and Ekphrasis in Victorian Times: Dante Gabriel Rossetti (2 ECTS)

1. Primary Text  

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Hand and Soul, «The Germ», 1, 1850, p. 23-33.

2. Critical Essays

Kashtan Aaron, “Pre-Raphaelite Approaches to Ut Pictura Poesis: Sister Arts or Sibling Rivalry?”, «English and History of Art», 151, Brown University, 2004.

http://www.victorianweb.org/painting/prb/kashtan12.html  

Marucci Franco, “Introduzione”, in Dante Gabriel e Christina Rossetti, La mano e l’anima e altri racconti, Genova, Il Melangolo, 2001, pp. 7-30.

Please remember that in compliance with art 171 L22.04.1941, n. 633 and its amendments, it is illegal to copy entire books or journals, only 15% of their content can be copied.

For further information on sanctions and regulations concerning photocopying please refer to the regulations on copyright (Linee Guida sulla Gestione dei Diritti d’Autore) provided by AIDRO - Associazione Italiana per i Diritti di Riproduzione delle opere dell’ingegno (the Italian Association on Copyright).

All the books listed in the programs can be consulted in the Library.

During the exam students will have to 1) read and translate the texts which are included in the syllabus; 2) analyse and contextualise them. References will also be made to the the main literary voices of the English canon of the 18th and 19th centuries. 

A written test will also be given at the end of Module A.

- What are its main rhetorical and stylistic features? 

- What was the literary background of the time? 

- How did this author contribute to this literary current? 

- Can you establish any intertetextual relations between this author/text and the most significant ones of the time? Give clear examples