Students are expected to possess an adequate level of English to be able to follow lectures, discuss literary topics, make an oral presentation, and write an essay in English. 

Students are also expected to already possess a sound knowledge of English literary history from its origins to the contemporary.

Teaching will mainly consist in lectures, but class discussion will be strongly encouraged; the last part of the semester will be devoted to oral reports.

Elearning page of course: the course page on the elearning platform will be used to share materials (primary and secondary texts; material for oral report and written paper, information about timetables, deadlines, etc...).

Teacher/student interaction: weekly office hours; email.

Language of course: English

This course consists of two different modules:

Module A: 54 class hours, The “Otherness of History”: The Historical Novel from Scott to the late 20th century.

Module B independent work: list of primary and secondary sources 

MODULE A:

The course intends to introduce students to one of the most fertile areas of contemporary theory, the controversial debate on the relationship between history and narrative or, to put it differently, on the “construction” of history within narrative texts.

The introductory part of the course will be devoted to delineating a theoretical and methodological framework through the illustration of specific approaches such as Historiographic Metafiction and Trauma Theory. The course will also take into account the transformations of the “historical novel” as a genre, from its beginnings in the early 19th century to the late 20th century, when the phenomenology and functions of historical writing appear interestingly varied.

MODULE B

Module B consists of a list of readings to be contextualized within the panorama of English Literary and Cultural History.

MODULE A

a/ Primary sources

Walter Scott, Ivanhoe, ed. by Ian Duncan, OUP, 1996.

A choice of two among the following novels:

Graham Swift, Waterland (1983), Picador, 1992.

Peter Ackroyd, Chatterton (1987), Sphere Books, 1988.

Ian McEwan, Black Dogs (1992), Vintage, 1998.

Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things (1997), Harper, 1998.

b/ Secondary sources

Anne H. Steven, "The Formation of a Genre" (1-20)  and "Epilogue: Ivanhoe  and Historical Fiction" (150-163), in British Historical Fiction before Scott, London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.

Del Ivan Janik, "History and the 'Here and Now': The Novels of Graham Swift", Twentieth Century Literature, 35 (1), 1989, pp. 74-88.

Dana Shiller, "The Redemptive Past in the Neo-Victorian Novel", Studies in the Novel, 29 (4), 1997, pp. 538-560. 

Muller-Wood, Anja and Wood, J. Carter,  "Bringing the past to heel: History, identity and violence in Ian McEwan's Black Dogs", Literature and History, 16 (2), 2007, pp. 43–56.

Roberta Ferrari, Ian McEwan, Firenze, Le Lettere, 2012 (Chapter on Black Dogs).  

Roberta Ferrari, "'Children who will inherit the world': Childhood and History in Graham Swift and Arundhati Roy”, in R. Ferrari – L. Giovannelli (a c. di), The Complete Consort. Studi di Anglistica in onore di Francesco Gozzi, PLUS, Pisa 2005, pp. 345-370.

Theory

Linda Hutcheon, "Historiographic Metafiction: Parody and the Intertextuality of History" (3-32), in Intertextuality and Contemporary American Fiction, ed. P. O'Donnell and Robert Con Davis,  Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989.

Shoshana Felman, “Education and Crisis, Or the Vicissitudes of Teaching” (1-56) and Dori Laub, “Bearing Witness or the Vicissitudes of Listening” (57-74), in S. Felman and D. Laub, Testimony. Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History, New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis, 1992.

Further criticism will be suggested during the course.

MODULE B

STUDENTS WHO HAVE NEVER TAKEN THIS EXAM

Primary sources:

Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy, any edition.

T.S.Eliot, The Waste Land/La terra desolata (1922), introduzione, traduzione e note di Alessandro Serpieri, Rizzoli, 1982.

T.S.Eliot, “Tradition and the Individual Talent”; “Ulysses, Order and Myth” any edition.

Tom Stoppard, Arcadia,  any edition.

Secondary sources:

Molly Smith, "The Theater and the Scaffold: Death as Spectacle in The Spanish Tragedy", Studies in English Literature. 1500-1900, Vol. 32, no. 2 (Spring 1992), pp. 217-232. 

Francesco Gozzi, Letture eliotiane, ETS, 2003 ("Introduction", pp. 5-17 and Chapter 2 "The Waste Land", pp.61-102).

Enoch Brater, “Playing for Time (and Playing with Time) in Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia”, Comparative Drama, Vol. 39, no. 2 (Summer 2005), pp. 157-168.

Literary history/Literary and cultural Theory:

Peter Barry, Beginning Theory. An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory, Manchester and New York, Manchester UP, 20092.

STUDENTS WHO HAVE ALREADY TAKEN THIS EXAM

Primary sources:

Thomas Love Peacock, Nightmare Abbey, any edition. http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9909

James Joyce, Ulysses, Episodes I-II-III-IX, any edition.

W.B. Yeats, "Easter 1916" and "Sailing to Byzantium", any edition.

Flann O’Brien, At Swim-Two Birds, any edition.

Secondary sources:

James Mulvihill, "Peacock's Nightmare Abbey and the 'Shapes' of Imposture." Studies in Romanticism, Vol. 34 (1995), pp. 553-68.

Francesco Gozzi, Fuori del labirinto, Pisa, ETS, 1993  (Introduzione; Episodi I-II-III-IX).

George Bornstein, "Yeats and Romanticism" and Daniel Albright "Yeats and Modernism", in M. Howes and J. Kelly (eds), The Cambridge Companion to W.B. Yeats, CUP, 2009, pp. 19-35 and 59-76.

Roberta Ferrari, La scrittura come travestimento dell’io. La narrativa di Flann O’Brien, Pisa, ETS, 1995.

Students who cannot attend classes will necessarily take an oral exam (Module A + B together), starting from the winter session (January – February 2021).

Module A will be assessed through an evaluation of the oral presentation (1/3) and of the written paper (1/3).

Written papers must be submitted at least ten days before the oral exam.

Module B will be assessed by an oral examination in English (1/3), during which students will be expected to discuss the primary sources by analyzing them from a stylistic, thematic and linguistic point of view, as well as by contextualizing them within their literary period.  Students are also expected  to be able to delineate and discuss in general terms the development of literary and cultural theory from Structuralism to Post-structuralism and the most recent trends. It is also expected that students will have  a thorough knowledge of English Literary History from the beginnings to the contemporary. 

https://elearning.humnet.unipi.it/course/view.php?id=3109

The course will start on 22nd September 2020, at 10.15 a.m.