ENGLISH LITERATURE
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- Versione italiana
- Academic year
- 2021/2022
- Teacher
- LUISA MARINO
- Credits
- 6
- Curriculum
- ARCHEOLOGIA E ARTI
- Didactic period
- Secondo Semestre
- SSD
- L-LIN/10
Training objectives
- Students will acquire a good knowledge of British literature and culture from the XVII century to the XXI century. A selection of texts will give them the possibility to read British literary culture in both a synchronic and a diachronic perspective.
Specific theoretical and methodological essays will help students in both reading critically the contexts of production/reception of the texts referred as "primary texts" and interpreting the style and the aesthetic values of the selected authors. Prerequisites
- Knowledge of English: level B1 or higher
Course programme
- Title: Colonial Legacies, Post-Colonial Readings: Unpacking Cultural Discourses
The course is built around the idea(s) of Coloniality and Post-coloniality. Proposing the analysis of texts from the XVII century to the XXI century, the course seeks to offer an overview on the issue of (colonial) power and on some of the possible counter-narrations to colonial power. Analyzing style, intratextual and intertextual references we will see in which ways the literary language can convey and/or discuss (colonial) power. Didactic methods
- Classes will be taught in English.
First, classes will tackle both the socio-historical context of the selected centuries and the methodological framework of the course. Then, the focus will be on the selected authors.
In order to foster interaction, specific texts (and contexts) will be presented and students will be encouraged to make questions and comments. Learning assessment procedures
- The exam is oral. Students will be tested on the topics of the course. During the exam they will be asked to analyse, comment and translate primary texts according to the methodological essays and to the socio-historical contexts highlighted in the History of Literature.
Reference texts
- PRIMARY TEXTS
William Shakespeare, The Tempest (1610)
Aphra Behn, Oroonoko, or the Royal Slave (1688)
Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (1847)
Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea (1966)
THEORETICAL-METHODOLOGICAL ESSAYS
One of the following texts :
Ania Loomba. Colonialism/Postcolonialism. Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge, 2015, 7-90.
Walter Mignolo and Catherine E. Walsh. On decoloniality. Concepts, Analytics, Praxis. Durham: Duke University Press, 2018, 105-134.
two of the following texts:
Bill Ashcroft. The Empire Writes Back. London: Routledge, 1989, 1-13.
Itamar Even-Zohar. “The Position of Translated Literature within the Literary Polysystem”. Poetics Today 11:1 (1990), 45-51.
Walter Mignolo. “DELINKING”, Cultural Studies, 21:2, 449-514.
Gayatry Chakravorty Spivak. “Can the Subaltern Speak?”. In Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (eds.) Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory. A Reader. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993, 66 – 111.
CRITICAL ESSAYS
All critical essays will be available in the ‘Materiale didattico’ since the first class.
HISTORY OF LITERATURE
Ronald Carter and John McRae. The Routledge History of Literature in English. Britain and Ireland. Londo: Routledge, 2021.
