Comparative English Literature

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

1) Knowledge and Understanding

This course intends to present students with the main cultural/literary trends of late modern and contemporary Britain and Italy, thus focusing on the main features of travel and migrant writing in Anglo-Italian contexts. 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 Italian and British culture in late modern and contemporary 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 also 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 texts.     

Both the course and the syllabus are divided into 2 modules:

1) Writing Italy: Fiction and Travel (3 ECTS);

2) Italian Migrant Communities in Scotland: Perceptions and Self-Perceptions (3 ECTS);

Module A, Writing Italy: Fiction and Travel (3 ECTS), is centred on four XIX-XXI century English writers: Charles Dickens, E.M. Forster, Muriel Spark, and Jan Morris. The extracts that will be presented in class will draw the students’ attention to the way the Italian “other” has been represented until today.

Module B, Italian Migrant Communities in Scotland: Perceptions and Self-Perceptions (3 ECTS), will focus on Joe Pieri (1918-2012), Ann Marie Di Mambro (1949―), Anne Pia (1951―) e Mary Contini (1961―), Scots-Italian writers, who have written about the Italian communities in Glasgow and Edinburgh. Their works will throw light on the history of Italian migration to Britain as well as on the concepts of identity, “perception” and “self-perception”.

• A. Writing Italy: Fiction and Travel (3 ECTS)

Students will choose one of the following handbooks:

·       Lilla Crisafulli e Keir Elam (a cura di), Manuale di letteratura e cultura inglese, Bologna, Bononia University Press, 2009, pp. 181-489.

·       Harry Blamires, A Short History of English Literature, London, Routledge, 2013, pp. 231-423.

Texts and Materials

• Charles Dickens, Pictures from Italy (1846) [Penguin Classics, latest ed.]
• E.M. Forster, A Room with a View (1908) [Penguin Classics, latest ed.]
• Muriel Spark, Territorial Rights (1979) [Virago, latest ed.]The relevant information about the above-mentioned authors and works will be found in the PPT presentation, also in critical essays, which will be made available in electronic form and on STUDIUM. 
• Jan Morris, Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere (2001) [Faber & Faber, latest ed.]

   

   

  Methodology

   

  Students will read

  ·       Tim Youngs, The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2013, pp. 50-177.

   

   

  B. Italian Migrant Communities in Scotland: Perceptions and Self-Perceptions (3 ECTS)

   

  Primary Texts

   

  Students will study the given extracts and will read one of these works in full:   

   

      

  • Joe Pieri, The Isle of the Displaced; An Italian-Scot’s Memoirs of Internment in the Second World War (1997) [also in Kindle ed. 2014]
  • Ann Marie Di Mambro, Tally’s Blood (2002) [also in Kindle ed. 2014]
  • Mary Contini, Dear Olivia: An Italian Journey of Love and Courage (2007) [either in paperback or Kindle ed.]
  • Anne Pia, Language of My Choosing. The Candid Life-Memoir of an Italian-Scot (2017) [either in paperback or Kindle ed.]

   

  The relevant information about the above-mentioned authors and works will be found in the PPT presentation, also in critical essays, which will be made available in electronic form and on STUDIUM.

   

• Critical Essays

   

  Students will read

   

  • Burrell Kathy and Panikos Panayi, Histories and Memories: Migrants and their History in Britain, London, I.B. Tauris 2006, pp. 57-74.
  • Colpi Terri, Italians’ Count in Scotland: The 1933 Census. Recording History, London, The St. James Press, 2015, pp. 101-120.
  • D’Amore Manuela, Neutralising “difference by silence”, “choosing to remain peripheral”: Xenophobia, Marginalisation and Death in Italian Scottish Migrant Narratives of World War II, in I. Sirkeci and M. Zulfiu Alili (a cura di), The Migration Conference 2020 Proceedings: Migration and Integration, London, Transnational Press, 2020, pp. 131-134.   
  • D’Amore Manuela, Transcultural Identities, Plurilingualism and Gender in Scottish Italian Literary Writing: Ann Marie Di Mambro, Anne Pia and Mary Contini, «Polyphonie», vol. 7, n. 1, 2020, pp. 1-21.    

They will be expected to translate the chosen extracts into Italian. 

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

Travel literature in late modern and contemporary Britain: formal features and themes.

- Charles Dickens and his vision of Rome in Pictures from Italy

-  Travel as an opportunity of individual growth in E.M. Forster’s A Room With a View.

- Italian immigration in Britain: historical phases and development.

The Arandora Star tragedy in Italian Scottish literary accounts: from Joe Pieri to Anne Pia.