54705 - English Literature 3 (A-L)

Learning outcomes

At the end of the course students will be able to analyse aspects and problems of the history of English literature. They will be able to read individual authors in an analytical way. They will handle theroretical and methodological tools with regard to formal, thematic, and stylistic aspects of individual literary works, as well and co-textual and contextual structures.

Course contents

Youth, Love and Rage

Inspired by the Italian title of the British film The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, from a short story by Alan Sillitoe with the same title, the course will analyze English fiction in the 1950s and the 1960s, considering the issues of the adolescent rebellion, of women's conditions and the fiction by or about the first migrants.

Readings/Bibliography

Students are required to read five works from the following list:

Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim (1954)

* Samuel Selvon, Lonely Londoners (1956)

John Osborne, Look Back in Anger (1956)

* Colin McInnes, Absolute Beginners (1959)

Alan Sillitoe, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1959)

* Edna O'Brien, The Country Girls (1960)

Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961)

Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange (1962)

John Le Carré, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963)

* Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea (1966)

Angela Carter, The Magic Toyshop (1967)

John Fowles, The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969)

 

And the following critical texts:

 

Roberto Bertinetti, Dai Beatles a Blair: la cultura inglese contemporanea, capp. 1, 2, 3, Roma, Caroccci, 2001, pp. 7-61 (F)

Malcolm Bradbury, “No, Not Bloomsbury: 1954-1960” e “Crossroads: Fiction in the Sixties”, in The Modern British Novel, London, Penguin, 1994, pp. 361-415 (F)

Dominic Head, "Class and Social Change", in Modern British Fiction, 1950-2000, Cambridge, Cambrisge University Press, 2002, pp. 49-72 (F)

David Lodge, “The Novelist at the Crossroad”, in The Novelist at the Crossroads and Other Essays on Fiction and Criticism, London, Ark, 1971, pp. 3-34 (F)

The students who choose this course as "Letteratura dei paesi di lingua inglese" are required to read at least three out of the four novels with an asterisk.

Teaching methods

Lectures.

Close reading of extracts from the narrative works.

Film adaptations of literary texts

Assessment methods

Teaching tools

Formal lectures.

DVDs.

Desktop computer and screen.

Office hours

See the website of Gino Scatasta