ENGLISH LITERATURE I

Single discipline educational activity

Course Sheet

Course code:

L0022

Academic Year of enrolment:

2017

Year of supply:

2018/2019

Type of Course:

Characterising

Degree:

Course of 2nd Cycle Degree in MODERN LANGUAGES, LITERATURES AND CULTURES

Disciplinary Sector:

ENGLISH LITERATURE

Location:

PESCARA

Credits:

Programme Year:

Cycle:

Second semester

Hours of classroom activity:

Individual study hours:

114

Prerequisites:

Classes are offered in English and exams are in English; so students are required to have a good knowledge of the teaching language.

Objectives

LEARNING OBJECTIVES
A first aim of the course is that of offering students a deep knowledge of Victorian culture, with special attention for two authors who practised travel and adventure novels: Haggard and Conrad. A multi-ethnic and multicultural perspective will be then adopted to connect the above-mentioned aspects with Anglophone cultures and literatures (more specifically, with those of the ex African colonies) which have been deeply influenced by phenomena rooted into the Victorian age. The objective of this widened perspective is to increase the students’ knowledge and skills, to give them a good knowledge of the cultures and literature of the foreign languages they have chosen to study, to encourage them to adopt a comparative approach and to draw interdisciplinary links (with history, anthropology, the arts and cinema). The LM37 Curriculum aims to train future teachers, highly qualified language experts, as well as employees in the press and media industry, in cultural services and international cooperation. In line with these professional objectives, the course intends to strenghten the students’ ability to pursue a critical analysis of historical, cultural and literary phenomena that take place in foreign countries, to deal with themes that are highly relevant nowadays (such as the African diaspora and migratory waves), and to draw ever-new comparisons with other realities, including the Italian and North-American realities. On a literary plane, the course aims to provide advanced knowledge of Victorian and Anglophone literatures, thereby reinforicing the students’ literary notions and encouraging their adoption of an intercultural approach. The students’ abilities to conduct a linguistic, rheorical and structural analysis of specialized texts (literary and theoretical) will be also strengthened, and new postcolonial theories and methodologies will be studied. On a linguistic plane, a main learning objective of the course is to reinforce the students’ abilities to understand specialized texts in English, including complex ones, to reflect on English varieties in the world, and to expound the themes they have learnt in critically autonomous speeches in correct, formal English.

LEARNING OUTCOMES
Acquisition of fundamental knowledge of Anglophone cultures and literatures from the nineteenth century to the present day, including those that are gaining international relevance nowadays, and knowledge of historical, social, anthropological and artistic elements that are relevant to different literary contexts;
deep knowledge of three British and Anglophone authors and their relations with their cultural and ltierary context, the genres they practised and the canon;
ability to analyse and interpret texts written in English from a linguistic, rhetorical, stylistic and intersemiotic perspective; ability to connect these texts to their appropriate historical and literary context and to recognize their typology;
ability to reflect on cultural and literary topics from a multi.ethnic perspective, also in relation to relevant events in today’s world;
acquisition of knowledge of various methodologie and critical approaches to literary texts, with special attention for postcolonial theory;
ability to read, understand and detect linguistic varieties in specialized texts in English;
ability to classify and synthetize data and information, to elaborate them and communicate them orally in a well-argued, critically autonomous speech in correct, formal English.

Contents

Introduction to Victorian England: cultural, anthropological, social and artistic aspects. Historical and political notions on slaveri, British colonialism, the process of decolonization, migrations and the effects these phenomena are having on today’s reality, with special attention for Congo, Nigeria and Great Britain Representations of ethnic diversity in works by Henry Rider Haggard and Joseph Conrad. Stylistic and thematic aspects of Haggard’s and Conrad’s works; their relation with the literary context and their development of the genre of adventure and travel narrative. Postcolonial theory: key concepts and methodological use. Thematic, stylistic and linguistic peculiarities of the African novel in English and its relation with the British canon. Analysis of a novel by Chinua Achebe: distinctive elements, literary classification and distinctive aspects of the novelist. Basic notions of filmic adaptation/appropriation of literary texts: the case of “Apocalypse Now”.

Extended Syllabus

Part 1 (3 credits)
After an introduction to the historical, socio-political and anthropological aspects of nineteenth-century Britain, Part 1 will focus on the British Empire, with special attention for such phenoma as slavery and colonialism, especially in West Africa and Congo. This historical and cultural introduction will be followed by an analysis of works by two late-Victorian novelists who practised adventure and travel fiction: Rider Haggard and Joseph Conrad. Their works will be analysed in relation to their cultural context, with special attention for their thematic and stylistic peculiarities, the literary genre they used and their reflection on ethnic issues. The texts under scrutiny will be one out of three short stories by Haggard characterized by racial stereotypes and by a strong realistic approach: “Hunter Quatermain’s Story”, “Long Odds” and “Black Heart and White Heart”. These stories will be compared with “Heart of Darkness” by Conrad, whose dramatization of colonial tensions is coupled with specific early Modernist experiments. Part 1 also includes a discussion of F. F Coppola’s "Apocalypse Now", a film freely adapted from Conrad’s novella, which will be shown and commented in class, with a theoretical reflection on the process of filmic adaptation/appropriation.

Part 2 (1 credit)
This part focuses on key postcolonial concepts that have significantly influenced Anglophone culture and literature in the last fifty years and examines their relevance to an analysis of the literary texts listed in this syllabus. The following concepts will be studied: alterity, ambivalence, anti-colonialism, black consciousness, catachresis, centre/margins, colonial desire, colonialism, comprador, contrapuntal reading, cultural diversity/difference, decolonization, double colonization, essentialism, Fanonism, feminism and post-colonialism, hybridity, imperialism, mimicry, neo-colonialism, Orientalism, othering, postcolonialism, race, slavery, universalism, worlding.

Part 3 (2 credits)
The third part will start with a historical introduction to the process of decolonization of the former British colonies in Africa, with special attention for the main historical events, the socio-cultural context, the anthropological reality and the artistic life of Nigeria. This introduction will be followed by an analysis of “Things Fall Apart” (1958) by Chinua Achebe, which is considered a classic of the new African literature in English. Main objects of focus will be the novel’s historical, social and anthropological references, as well as its linguistic and aesthetic peculiarities.

Recommended Bibliography

PRIMARY SOURCES
- Joseph Conrad, “Heart of Darkness and Other Tales”, Oxford University Press, 2008
- “The Best Short Stories of Rider Haggard”, ed. Peter Haining, 1981 (only the Introduction and ONE of the following short stories: “Hunter Quatermain’s Story”, “Long Odds” e “Black Heart and White Heart”)
- Chinua Achebe, “Things Fall Apart”, any edition

SECONDARY SOURCES
-Silvia Albertazzi, “La letteratura postcoloniale. Dall’Impero alla World Literature”, Carocci, 2013
- Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin, "Post-Colonial Studies. The Key Concepts", Routledge, 2000 (only the concepts listed in alphabetical order in Part 2)

ADDITIONAL SOURCES (guides for those students to wish to analyse the primary texts in depth)
- Allan Simmons, “Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’: A Reader’s Guide”, Continuum, 2007 (Parts 1-3)
 - Mariaconcetta Costantini, “Nella foresta degli igbo. Una lettura pluriisotopica di Things Fall Apart di Chinua Achebe”, Merope, 15 (maggio 1995), pp. 193-216
- Julie Sanders, 2006. Adaptation and Appropriation, Routledge, 2006, pp. 1-41

The slides of powerpoint presentations shown in class will be provided by the teacher to students who ask for them at the end of classes or during the teacher’s office hours. Students will have to carry their own USB devices to get the slides.

Teaching Methods

The course, consisting of 36 teaching hours, is mainly taught in 2-hour classes according to the university’s teaching schedule. Lectures and seminars are held by the teacher responsible for the course. Seminars held by academic experts are foreseen, depending on the department’s ability to organize them during the academic year. Lectures and seminars will be arranged as follows: from context to text (cultural analysis); reading and comment of relevant passages from primary sources (semantic and structural analysis); discussion on films (basic intersemiotic analysis). At the end of each part of the syllabus., there will be a discussion on the main topics dealt with in class: students will be asked questions by the teacher and encouraged to answer individually.

Attendance is non compulsory but advised. The exam will be the same for students who attend and students who are unable to.

Evaluation methods

Verification of learning:

Students will take an oral exam in English, conversing on the topics dealt with in class and listed in this syllabus. They will be asked 5-6 questions meant to assess their ability to express themselves correctly in English, and their knowledge of the historical context, the socio-cultural issues, as well as the stylistic and thematic peculiarities of the authors’ works. Their ability to understand and conduct a critical analysis of the literary texts listed in this syllabus will be also assessed.
The final score will be from 0 to 30. Students will pass the exam with a sufficient score if they show a basic knowledge of the topics; they will get an excellent score if they show a very good knowledge of the topics and an ability to develop an in-depth analysis and a critical discourse on them.
In particular, the exam will assess:
the students’ acquisition of knowledge of British and Anglophone cultural and literary contexts from the nineteenth century to the present day; their acquisition of historical, social, anthropological and artistic knowledge relevant to the literary areas dealt with in the course and as well as to the present international reality, also from a multiethnic perspective;
the students’ good knowledge of the three British and Anglophone writers listed in this sybllabus, of their relations with their cultural and literary contexts, with different literary typologies and the canon;
the students’ aiblity to understand, analyse and interpret specialized texts from linguistic, rhetorical, stylistic and intersemiotic perspectives, to read them by using different methodologies and theories, and especially the main postcolonial theories;
the students’ ability to read, understand and detect linguistic varieties in specialized texts in English;
the students’ ability to classify, sum up data and information, to elaborate and communicate them orally in correct and formal English, to expound these data with critical autonomy and to show that they can reflect on their relevance to contemporary reality.

Contacts/More Information

Incoming Erasmus students are welcome to attend classes.

Università degli Studi
"G. d'Annunzio"

Chieti - Pescara

Aree