ECTS - University of Pisa
| Modules | Area | Type | Hours | Teacher(s) | |
| LETTERATURA INGLESE III | L-LIN/10 | LEZIONI | 54 |
|
CLICK ON UK FLAG FOR COURSE DESCRIPTION
Available to IHP (International Programme in Humanities) students
Course lecturer: Fausto Ciompi
Course language: English
Taught: Semester 2
Course start date: 15 February
Credits: 9
Exam Code: 994LL
This course introduces to concepts and practices that underpin the interpretation of literary texts. The student who completes the course will have a general knowledge of critical methodologies and literary theories (e.g. classical and post-classical narratology, hermeneutics, stylistics, bio-politics, gender and affect studies) and a specific knowledge of how canonical and extra-canonical literary texts can be interpreted according to normative and non-normative poetics. The course aims at improving the student’s understanding of literature and literary theory and at fostering the abilities needed to analyze literary texts and write a University thesis on English literature.
An in-course written assignment will assess the students’ interpretive skills and their knowledge of the topics discussed during lessons and seminars.
The final examination will assess the ability to produce coherent and insightful readings of literary texts and the skills needed to discuss theoretical, critical and literary topics.
Students will develop their capacity to
The main assessment criteria will be clarity, coherence and effectiveness of argumentation.
Students will practise their argumentative and interpretive skills in class activities and assignments. Independent study will help them develop the ability to retrieve relevant information from different sources and elaborate their own ideas when they try their hands at the analysis of literary texts. They will improve their writing skills by completing an in-course paper and will showcase the skills acquired during the course in a final independently-researched essay. During seminars and the oral exam, they will exercise critical reasoning and apply the core skills that are needed to effectively read and contextualize literary texts.
Positive behaviors include active cooperation in group work, the ability to apply previous feedback, and the creative elaboration of ideas and projects.
Lecture. Seminar. Pair and group work. Written assignment.
Fictional and non-fictional texts from the 17th century to present day, with a focus on the contemporary scene. Keynotes in contemporary cultural and literary theory.
The Creative Field
Jonathan Swift, A Modest Proposal
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad, “The Secret Sharer”, from ’Twixt Land and Sea
Zadie Smith, “Kelso Deconstructed”, “Escape from New York”, from Grand Union
Ben Jonson, On My First Son
John Donne, The Ecstasy
Jonathan Swift, A Description of the Morning
S.T. Coleridge, Christabel
G.M. Hopkins, Pied Beauty
Philip Larkin, Going, Continuing to Live, Mr Bleaney, The Explosion
Ted Hughes, Crow Tyrannosaurus, Hill-stone was content
Sylvia Plath, Daddy
David Black, The Educators
Seamus Heaney, Digging, The Grauballe Man
Carol Ann Duffy, The Virgin Punishing the Infant
Samuel Beckett, Endgame
Mark Ravenhill, Shopping and Fucking
Texts must be read in the original language. No specific edition is recommended. All texts will be available from Biblioteca LM2, Via S. Maria 57. Poems are available on the Moodle course webpage, Poetry Foundation and similar websites.
The Interdiscursive Cloud
In order to extend their exploration of textualities, students will reflect on
G.M. Hopkins, Pied Beauty, translated by Benedetto Croce, Eugenio Montale, Beppe Fenoglio. [Essential]
The following is instead non-compulsory study material from which students can gain inspiration for presentation or written work:
From S.T. Coleridge’s Christabel to E.A. Poe’s The Sleeper, J.S. LeFanu’s Carmilla and Nightwish’s Beauty of the Beast. [Optional]
The Virgin Punishing/Spanking the Child: From Max Ernst to Carol Ann Duffy. [Optional]
From J. Conrad’s Heart of Darkness to F.F. Coppola’s Apocalypse Now: Kurtz’s monologue on “the horror”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPPGMNOLaMw [Optional]
Conor McPherson, Endgame https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok7Vc3jczNg [Optional]
The Theoretical Debate
Students are required to familiarize with some key notions on literary and cultural theory that are expounded in these texts (see course webpage for page references):
Mikhail Bakhtin, [On Heteroglossia], from Discourse in the Novel
Roland Barthes, [On Studium and Punctum], from Camera Lucida
Harold Bloom, [On Death and the Canon], from The Western Canon
Pierre Bourdieu, [On Field of Power and Literary Field], from The Field of Cultural Production
Rosi Braidotti, [On Posthuman and Specific Theory], from The Posthuman
Laurence Buell, [On Rhetoric and Greenspeak], from The Future of Environmental Criticism: Environmental Crisis and Literary Imagination
Judith Butler, [On Gender Identity as Expression and Performance], from Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity
Jacques Derrida, [On Text and Supplement], from Of Grammatology
Monika Fludernik, [On Experientiality] from Towards a Natural Narratology
Michel Foucault, [On Statement and Discourse] from The Archaeology of Knowledge
Hans-Georg Gadamer, [On Understanding as Historically Effected Event], from Truth and Method
Donna Haraway, [On Situatedness] from “The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective”
Patrick Colm Hogan, [On Affect Studies and Literary Criticism (Ben Jonson’s On My First Son)], from Oxford Research Encyclopedia
Wolfgang Iser, [On Interpretation as Translatability], from The Range of Interpretation
J. Hillis Miller, [On “Does Literature Invent or Discover?”], from On Literature
Gerald Prince, [On Postcolonial Narratology], from “On a Postcolonial Narratology”
Jeffrey T. Nealon, [On Postmodernism], from “Postmodernism”
Peter Sloterdijk, [On Anthropocene], from What Happened in the 20th Century?
Peter Stockwell, [On Figure and Ground: Foregrounding, attractors, defamiliarization, the dominant (Ted Hughes’ Hill-Stone Was Content)], from Cognitive Poetics: An Introduction
Lawrence Venuti, [On the Translatability of the Untranslatable], from Contra Instrumentalism: A Translation Polemic
Raymond Williams, [On Culture], from Keywords
The Critical Space
Stanley Cavell, "Ending the Waiting Game: A Reading of Beckett's Endgame", in Must we Mean What We Say?, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1969, pp. 115–162.
Fausto Ciompi, Mondo e dizione. La poesia in Gran Bretagna e Irlanda dal 1945 a oggi, Pisa, ETS, 2007, pp. 128-140, 313-332, 431-440.*
Fausto Ciompi, “S.T. Coleridge: eros demoniaco e processo iracondo. Per l’interpretazione tipologica di Christabel”, in Ticontre. Teoria Testo Traduzione, XII, 2019, pp. 197-227.*
Thomas Horan, "Myth and Narrative in Mark Ravenhill’s Shopping and Fucking”, in Modern Drama, 5, 22, 2011, pp. 251-266.
Brian McHale, “Archaeologies of Knowledge: Hill’s Middens, Heaney’s Bogs, Schwerner’s Tablets”, in New Literary History, 30, 1, 1999, pp. 239-262.
Leo Spitzer, "Three Poems on Ecstasy", in Essays on English and American Literature, Princeton, NJ: Princeton U.P., 1962, pp. 139-53.
Tzvetan Todorov, “Heart of Darkness”, in Genres in Discourse, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990, pp. 103-112.
Cedric Watts, “The Mirror-Tale: An Ethico-Structural Analysis of Conrad’s ‘The Secret Sharer’”, in Critical Quarterly, 19, 1977, pp. 25-37.
*IHP and visiting students who do not meet the language requirements for reading these essays should read:
Hans Osterwalder, “Metonymic Ways of Sympathizing with the Underdog: Philip Larkin's ‘Mr Bleaney’ and Anthony Thwaite's ‘Mr Cooper'”, in English Studies: A Journal of English Language and Literature, 65, 5, 1984, pp. 426-433.
Jahan Ramazani, "‘Daddy, I Have Had to Kill You’: Plath, Rage, and the Modern Elegy”, in PMLA, 108, 5, 1993, pp. 1142-1156.
William Andrew Ulmer, “Christabel and the Origin of Evil”, in Studies in Philology, 104, 3, 2007, pp. 376-407.
The Handy Corner
In accordance with their research interests, students will read one of the following essays in which essential aspects of fictional prose, drama and poetry are discussed:
David Herman, “Getting Started: A Thumbnail Sketch of the Approach”, in Basic Elements of Narrative, Oxford, Wiley-Blackwell, 2009, pp. 1-22 (especially 17-22).
John Lennard, “Form”, from The Poetry Handbook, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2005, pp. 33-80.
Brian Richardson, “Drama and Narrative”, in The Cambridge Companion to Narrative, ed. David Herman, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2007, pp. 142-155.
The Reference Shelf
Students are required to revise/familiarize with the basic definitions of some literary and rhetorical terms contained in the following texts (a list of relevant entries is available on the course webpage):
David Herman, Manfred Jahn, Marie-Laure Ryan (eds), Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory, New York, Routledge, 2005.
Richard Lanham, A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms, Berkeley, CA, University of California Press, 1991.
Richard Lanham's text may be complemented with/replaced by Bice Mortara Garavelli, Manuale di retorica, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1988 and following editions.
Learning resources
Recordings of the literary texts discussed in the course can be accessed on such websites as Poetry Foundation and YouTube.
Students from the University of Pisa are advised to complete the online tutorial on “Criteri di scrittura dell’elaborato finale” (https://elearning.humnet.unipi.it/course/view.php?id=2661) before writing their final assignment.
Non-attending students are required to read two chapters of their choice from The Cambridge Companion to Narrative, ed. David Herman, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2007, “PART IV. Further Contexts for Narrative Study”, pp. 189-273.
They must submit the required two written assignments at least 15 days before the examination date (see below, under “Assessment methods”, for paper length and description). The course lecturer should be contacted for details.
Over the course of the term, students will submit a 750-word paper, written in either English or Italian, consisting in the close reading of a literary text included in the reading list and previously analyzed during class. The paper is due in two weeks from assignment date;
1) a 2500-word independently-researched essay, written in either English or Italian, on a self-selected text or a topic chosen among those taught in class. An approach taking into consideration two or more texts is also possible. The assignment is due in at least 15 days before the oral examination date, but attending students who sit the exam during the first summer session (typically in early June) are allowed to submit the assignment within 10 days after the date on which they take the oral exam.
In order to select critical material to be used in their research, students who write the final essay should be aware of two available sources: onesearch (https://onesearch.unipi.it/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=39UPI_V1) and MLA bibliography (https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?authtype=ip%2Cuid&groupid=main&profile=ehost&defaultdb=mlf).
All written assignments must be submitted to the course lecturer (fausto.ciompi@unipi.it) in PDF files;
2) the oral presentation in English of a topic concerning literary theory or the analysis and commentary of one or more literary texts chosen by the student among those included in the reading list;
3) a brief discussion, either in English or in Italian according to the student’s choice, of texts and issues analyzed during class.
The intermediate and final assessments must be completed with a score of 18 or better. The score in the in-course assessment will count towards the final mark. The overall mark is determined by combining scores for the written assessments (50 percent of the final mark) and those for the oral exam (50 percent of the final mark). The in-course assessment is a moderate-stakes test. The final written assessment is a high-stakes test.
Resits will be assessed by the same methodology.
Students who fail the in-course written assessment are allowed one additional attempt during term-time. Alternatively, they can sit the oral exam at the end of the course and take the 750-word written assessment in a different exam session. Students who have successfully completed the written assignments and fail the oral exam do no not have to take the written tests again.
Taught: Semester 2.
Course start date: 15 February.
Venues:
Course language: English.
Office hours: Thursdays, 12.00-13.30, Palazzo Scala, Via S. Maria 67.
Lecturer name and email address: Fausto Ciompi, fausto.ciompi@unipi.it
