30649 - English Literature 2 (2nd cycle)

Learning outcomes

Students will have a deep knowledge of Modern British Literature, with particular regard to the relationships between literary texts and history, language and the arts. They are able to use critical methodologies to read and analyze literary texts.

Course contents

The Swinging Sixties: youth, love and anger

The 1950s and the 1960s have been a decade of great social and political upheavals in the United Kingdom. How did they influence and were influenced by the literature of the decade? 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 will read three among the following works:

 

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)

Ian Fleming, Goldfinger(1959)

Edna O'Brien, The Country Girls (1960)

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

Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange (1962)

James G. Ballard, The Drowned World (1962)

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

Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea (1966)

Nell Dunn, Poor Cow (1967)

Angela Carter, The Magic Toyshop (1967)

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

 

And the following critical extracts:

Roberto Bertinetti, Dai Beatles a Blair: la cultura inglese contemporanea, capp. 1, 2, 3, Roma, Carocci, 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. 313-415 (F)

Dominic Head, "Class and Social Change", in The Cambridge Introduction to Modern British Fiction, 1950-2000, Cambridge, Cambridge 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)

Assessment methods

Erasmus or Overseas students could sit the exam as the Italian students or write an essay (about 10 pages), whose topic must be approved by the teacher.

Office hours

See the website of Gino Scatasta

See the website of Carla Comellini