LETTERATURA INGLESE DA CHAUCER ALLA RESTAURAZIONE M - Z

According to the Dublin descriptors, the Course intends to pursue the following aims:

1) to introduce the students to the history of English literature from the Middle Ages to the Restoration;

2) to provide contextual knowledge of this period, both synchronically and diachronically;

3) to offer basic methodological guidelines to literary criticism’s various trends, including Cultural and Gender Studies, with the aim of providing a more autonomous and mature approach to the texts and issues investigated.

4) to favour the improvement of students’ language skills through direct exposure to a number of anthologised texts (both in full and as excerpts) by the period’s most important literary figures;

5) to enhance the students’ historical-literary awareness of key authors, texts, and genres of English literature from the Middle Ages to the Restoration.

- Outline of the history of English literature from Chaucer to the Restoration

- Selection of significant texts/excerpts

- Methodology

Module B. In-Depth Study (3 ECTS)

Cosmopoiesis and epistemic innovation in Margaret Cavendish’s The Blazing World

Better known for her alleged eccentricity than for her literary merits, the rediscovery of Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle (1623-1673), is mostly due to feminist critics, starting with Virginia Woolf. Among Cavendish’s vast philosophical and literary output, The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing World (1668) – the first sci-fi utopian romance by a woman writer – stands out for its intellectual originality and visionary boldness. Cavendish adopts a hybrid genre, mixing philosophical speculation, political debate and fantastic invention, in order to deconstruct the patriarchal assumptions underpinning the epistemologies and ideologies of her time. By a close reading of some significant excerpts from the text, Module B will analyse the peculiarities of its experimental form (imagery, style, narrative technique, literary models) in relation to the specific intellectual and literary contexts and contemporary ideological formations. The aim will be that of scrutinising the most significant textual processes through which the author’s utopian imaginary engages her period’s culture from a transgressively gynocentric epistemic and political perspective. 

English Literature from Chaucer to the Restoration:

- Andrew Sanders, The Short Oxford History of English Literature, Oxford UP, London, 3^rd ed. 2004 (from Chaucer to Congreve, pp. 48-272, also available in the Italian edition: Storia della letteratura inglese, Mondadori, Milano, 2001, 1^st vol.).

Anthology:

Correct English pronunciation, translation, and in-depth analysis of the rhetorics, stylistics, and formal features of the 16 listed texts/excerpts will be required at the exam:

1. Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, “The General Prologue” (ll. 1-42)
   
2. Thomas Wyatt, “I Find no Peace and All My War is Done”
3. Queen Elizabeth I, “Speech to the Troops at Tilbury” + John Knox’s The First Blast Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women (excerpt) and Juan Luis Vives’ The Instruction of a Christen Woman (excerpt)
4. Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, Book I, Canto I: “A Gentle Knight was pricking on the plaine” (ll. 1-45)
5. Philip Sidney, Astrophel and Stella, Sonnet I, “Loving in truth, and faine in verse my love to show”
6. Mary Wroth, Pamphilia to Amphilanthus, Sonnet I, “When night’s blacke Mantle could most darknesse proue”
   
7. Christopher Marlowe, The Tragicall History of Doctor Faustus, “Faustus’ last hour and damnation”: scene xiii (ll. 57-115)
   
8. William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, “Oberon speaks to Robin”: Act II, scene i (ll. 161-180); “The Fairies’ love potion”: Act II, scene ii (ll. 1-41)
9. William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, “The Balcony scene”: Act II, scene ii (ll. 1-55)
   
10. William Shakespeare, Hamlet, “To be or not to be”: Act III, scene i (ll. 64-98)
    
11. John Donne, Songs and Sonnets, “A Lecture Upon the Shadow”
    
12. Katherine Philips, Poems by Mrs. Katherine Philips, the matchless Orinda, “Friendships Mystery, To My Dearest Lucasia”
13. Margaret Cavendish, The Description of a New World, Called The Blazing World, “The Epilogue to the Reader”
    
14. Aphra Behn, The Dutch Lover, “Epistle to the Reader” (excerpt)
15. John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book I, “The Heroic Defeat” (ll. 242-70)
    
16. John Dryden, Mac Flecknoe (ll. 1-30)
    

- Medieval Literature; G. Chaucer: part. The Canterbury Tales

- Renaissance culture (Protestant Reformation, “New Learning”)

- The sonnet: forms, themes, main poets (Th. Wyatt, P. Sidney, M. Wroth)

- Renaissance drama, part. Ch. Marlowe and W. Shakespeare

- The cult of Elizabeth I and E. Spenser's poem The Faerie Queene

- Metaphysical poetry: forms, themes, main poets (J. Donne, G. Herbert, H. Vaughan, R. Crashaw, A. Marvell)

- The Civil War and the Commonwealth; J. Milton, part. Paradise Lost

- Women's writing in the Interregnum, part. K. Philips

- The seventeenth-century utopian literature: focus on M. Cavendish