ECTS - University of Pisa
Scheda programma d'esame
ENGLISH LITERATURE D
LAURA GIOVANNELLI
Academic year2020/21
CourseEURO-AMERICAN LANGUAGES, LITERATURES AND PHILOLOGIES
Code1304L
Credits9
PeriodSemester 2
LanguageItalian

ModulesAreaTypeHoursTeacher(s)
LETTERATURA INGLESE DL-LIN/10LEZIONI54
LAURA GIOVANNELLI unimap
Learning outcomes
Knowledge

At the end of this course, students will be expected to achieve a high level of knowledge regarding

  • the organization, communicative goals and discursive policies underlying utopian and dystopian literature
  • the fruitful debates and stratified terminology associated with this literary production                  
  • the main features, levels of meaning, stylistic and axiological codes of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century English fiction dealing with utopian and dystopian themes  
  • updated critical tools and methodologies relating to this literary genre
  • the historical and social contexts referred to or discussed by the authors analyzed.
Assessment criteria of knowledge
  • During classes, students are encouraged to actively participate in the learning process and engage with the course material through short discussions. They may also, on a voluntary basis, present oral reports and case-based research which will demonstrate their level of factual knowledge and comprehension. Such reports will concern the authors or the primary as well as secondary texts included in the syllabus
  • This kind of participation will be taken into account in view of the final oral exam, which will focus on both Module A and Module B
  • Foreign students may choose to take the exam in English or in Italian.
Skills

During the course activities, students will acquire skills allowing them to

  • properly discuss and investigate in detail both the principles and dynamics of literary            communication (symbols, archetypes, connotation, instances, channels, codes, the spheres of referentiality and intertextuality) and the specific phenomenology of utopian and dystopian    fiction
  • recognize crucial tenets and choose the appropriate critical tools and methodologies
  • suitably contextualize a series of authors, works and topics
  • draw on the pertinent register when analyzing works and contexts.

 
Assessment criteria of skills
  • During classes, students are encouraged to actively participate in the learning process and engage with the course material through short discussions. They may also, on a voluntary basis, present oral reports and case-based research, which will demonstrate both their level of factual knowledge and comprehension and their communication/argument/analytical skills. Such reports will concern the authors or the primary as well as secondary texts included in the syllabus
  • This kind of participation will be taken into account in view of the final oral exam, which will focus on both Module A and Module B
  • Foreign students may choose to take the exam in English or in Italian.                    
Behaviors

During the course activities, students are expected to

  • develop a deep awareness of the semantic and symbolic relevance of the literary discourse and its communicative processes
  • pay attention to questions and issues informing the discursive policies of utopian/dystopian  writing and its connections with the extratextual sphere
  • consciously deal with the different levels of the dialogue involving  authors or literary              works and the complexity of situational contexts
  • respond to and provide a feedback on the relevance of critical studies concerning                  utopian/dystopian writing.
Assessment criteria of behaviors
  • During classes, students will be able to show their involvement, growth in cognitive understanding and critical sensibility through active participation in discussions and/or the presentation of oral reports and case-based research on the authors and texts included in the syllabus
  • The conclusive assessment will take place through a final oral exam
  • Foreign students may choose to take this exam in English or in Italian.
Prerequisites

This course requires a good command of the English language. An adequate knowledge of the history of English literature and its contexts (at least from the nineteenth century to the contemporary age) is also recommended.
Co-requisites

As regards foreign students, there is no specific co-requisite for this course.
Prerequisites for further study

This course is not a mandatory prerequisite for gaining access to other courses.
Teaching methods
  • Although this course is mainly structured on a taught-class basis, the students’ active participation is warmly encouraged (e.g., through short discussions, oral reports, case-based research on relevant texts, authors and topics)
  • The main language employed in lectures is Italian
  • Course materials and information will be shared through the e-learning page of the course (see E-learning Website “Area Umanistica”, https://elearning.humnet.unipi.it/)
  • Students may contact me during office hours (Palazzo Scala, Via Santa Maria, 67, Pisa), or any time of the year at my email address: laura.giovannelli@unipi.it  
Syllabus

Course structure:

This course of English Literature D  (54 hours) is structured into two units, which are both mandatory:

  1. Module A: “Reality and Otherness. English Fiction and the Trajectories of the Utopian/Dystopian Imaginary”
  2. Module B: Further reading material              

 

 MODULE A

“Reality and Otherness. English Fiction and the Trajectories of the Utopian/Dystopian Imaginary”

By looking at a small but significant selection of texts dating back to the nineteenth and twentieth century, this course aims at investigating the meanings, symbolic features, philosophical and prophetic connotations informing utopian and dystopian narratives. These narratives make up a fertile literary genre in which historically contextualized elements are often interfused with references to the present state of things. As suggested by its multiple definitions (e.g. “antiutopia”, “critical dystopia”, “speculative fiction”, “social science fiction”), this macrogenre lends itself to interesting modulations within each different work. After dealing with the necessary theoretical and historical premises, light will thus be thrown on the specificity of such chronotopic dimensions. [For further details, see Section 1. in the Bibliography]

MODULE B  

Further reading material              

This second unit consists in an individual learning experience that students are required to tackle. The four works included in the reading list are to be approached as tools for a further investigation of the utopian/dystopian discourse, in connection with the power of its mythopoetic imaginary and its moral and social questioning. [For further details, see Section 2. in the Bibliography]
Bibliography
  1. MODULE A - BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Primary texts: 

  • Samuel Butler, Erewhon, or Over the Range (1872)
  • H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds (1898)
  • E.M. Forster, “The Machine Stops”, “The Other Side of the Hedge”, “The Celestial Omnibus”, in Collected Short Stories (1947)
  • George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)     

 The works listed above may be read in any edition in English, provided it is an unabridged one.

 Required secondary sources:

 

  1. MODULE B - BIBLIOGRAPHY
  • William Morris, News from Nowhere (1890)
  • Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (1932)
  • Trevor Lloyd, “How to Write a Utopia: William Morris’s Medieval Interests and News from Nowhere”, Historical Reflections, 2 (1), 1975, pp. 89-108; the article can also be downloaded from https://www.jstor.org/stable/41298661?seq=1
  • Krishan Kumar, Utopia e antiutopia: Wells, Huxley, Orwell, Ravenna, Longo, 1995; or, alternatively, Bülent Diken, “Huxley’s Brave New World – and Ours”, Journal for Cultural Research, 15 (2), 2011, pp. 153-172; con le credenziali d’Ateneo, scaricabile anche all’indirizzo URL https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14797585.2011.574056 
Non-attending students info

In addition to the bibliography relating to Module A and B, non-attending students are required to study the following works: 

  • Lyman Tower Sargent, Utopianism: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford, Oxford U.P., 2010, Introduction and Chapters 1-2 (pp. 1-49); or, alternatively, Lyman Tower Sargent, “Ideology and Utopia: Karl Mannheim and Paul Ricoeur”, Journal of Political Ideologies, 13 (3), 2008, pp. 263-273
  • Gregory Claeys, “The Origins of Dystopia: Wells, Huxley and Orwell”, in G. Claeys (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Utopian Literature, Cambridge, Cambridge U.P., 2010, pp. 107-132; or, alternatively, Richard A. Posner, “Orwell versus Huxley: Economics, Technology, Privacy, and Satire”, Philosophy and Literature, 24, 2000, pp. 1-33
  • Peter Fitting, “Utopia, Dystopia and Science Fiction”, in G. Claeys (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Utopian Literature, Cambridge, Cambridge U.P., 2010, pp. 135-153; or, alternatively, Gorman Beauchamp, “Technology in the Dystopian Novel”, Modern Fiction Studies, 32 (1), Spring 1986, pp. 53-63.
Assessment methods
  • Students will be assessed through a final oral examination during one of the scheduled sessions of the exam period. Questions in Italian will be followed by a few ones in English, although foreign students may take the whole exam in English
  • Students may also, on a voluntary basis, take active part during lectures and present oral reports and case-based research, which will be positively taken into account in view of the final exam
  • The final exam will cover both Module A and B material and will test the students' level of knowledge, acquired skills and behaviours as illustrated in the previous sections of the syllabus. It will be 30/45 minutes long.      
Work placement

This course includes no specific training connected with work placement.
Notes

The time-schedule of this course is six hours (three lessons) per week:

MONDAYS   4 p.m.-5,30 p.m.

TUESDAYS  4 p.m.-5,30 p.m.

FRIDAYS     4 p.m.-5,30 p.m.

This course will be held online and will start  on Monday, 1 March 2021
Updated: 19/05/2021 16:12