Corsi di Studio del Dipartimento di Lingue e Letterature straniere e Culture moderne

The MA EAS course - English Literature first year - is part of the MA education in the field of literary studies in English (L-LIN/10 also for prospective school teachers). 

The course introduces students to texts and authors of the British literary canon and of the postcolonial counter-canon, also in relation to the phenomen of "rewriting" in the postcolonial anglophone context. A futher objective of the course is to strenghten critical and analystical skills in relation to close reading of texts, familiarity with diverse genres and their specific formal and stylistic features, and familiarity with the historic and cultural context. An introductory focus on postcolonial studies will also be provided. 

At the end of the course, students should be able to know and comprehend how to place authors and texts in the right context (historic, geographic, leterary and cultural). Moreover, students should be able to practically analyse texts from a stylistic and narratological perspective and in relation to literary genres, to detect literary historical features and be able to produce literary and cultural analysis, and, where possible, to apply postcolonial criticism, thanks to clear and effective communicative skills and appropriate use of critical terminology. The course will allow such training in analytucal discourse thanks to debates, dialogues, Q&A sessions and assessment of critical capacity and capacity to study autonompously.  

The course is taught in person and is fully taught in English. Complementary materials are available on the Moodle Platform and are compulsory and helpful for preparing the exam.

Those who do not attend the course are invited to contact the professor before the course starts, and to keep updated by also looking at the materials on MOODLE platform, and to ask for instructions in relation to the exam.

Questions or doubts about the exam must be discussed with the professor at least one month before the exam sessions.

SYLLABUS

1) FOCUS ON THE BRITISH CANON
Shakespeare, The Tempest, Einaudi, 2016 (bilingual text)
T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land, Rizzoli, 2017 (bilingual text)

2) FOCUS ON DIGITAL HUMANITIES (WORKSHOP)

A London Address: https://www.artangel.org.uk/a-room-for-london/a-london-address

Johny Pitts & Caryl Phillips, A bend in the River, A London Address: The Artangel Essays. London: Granta, pp. 35-45. http://abendintheriver.artangel.org.uk/

Concilio, ‘Following’ Teju Cole’s ‘Black Portraitures’

"On Zigzagging Between (Digital) Literature, Photography, Art History, Music and Much More…"
https://edizionicafoscari.unive.it/en/edizioni4/libri/978-88-6969-678-7/following-teju-coles-black-portraitures/


3) FOCUS ON WORLD LITERATURES IN ENGLISH (mandatory 2 of your choice)
Doris Lessing, Memoirs of a Survivor
Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood
Patrick White, The Hanging Garden
Witi Ihimaera, The Whale Rider (and film)
Zakes Mda, The Whale Caller (and film)

4) BIBLIOGRAPHY (mandatory)

2016. Bertinetti, Short History of English Literature, Torino, Einaudi / ebook, 2016.

5) BIBLIOGRAPHY, one of your choice (mandatory)

Bayo Akomolafe, These Wilds beyond Our Fences. Letters to my Daughter

Graham Huggan, Postcolonial Ecocriticism. Literatures, Animals, Environment

The course is offered in presence and with the help of materials available on MOODLE platform. Students are required to study all the texts listed and included in the programme and on the platform. In class, students are encouraged to present topics of interest to and with the community.

Final assessment: oral mandatory examination in presence; students are requested to study all mandatory texts and materials listed in the programme and materials available on Moodle platform.

The exam will be in English and will test textual comprehension, historical, cultural and geographical contextualization, genres evaluation and competence in literary (and postcolonial) criticism.

The final marks are based on 30/30 and excellence (Laude) might be achieved by showing a complete knowledge of the matarials, with appropriate critical methodology and linguistic salience.

The Syllabus is th esame both for attending and non-attending students. All students (from AGIC and from LINGUE) must enrol on both the Course page and the Moodle page; must study the material on the Moodle platform, besides the texts here listed in the "Program" section.