ENGLISH LITERATURE I

Università degli Studi
"G. d'Annunzio"

Chieti - Pescara

Single discipline educational activity

Course Sheet

Course code:

L0022

Academic Year of enrolment:

2023

Year of supply:

2023/2024

Type of Course:

Basic

Degree:

Course of 1st Cycle Degree in LINGUISTIC MEDIATION AND INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION

Disciplinary Sector:

ENGLISH LITERATURE

Location:

PESCARA

Credits:

Programme Year:

Professor and Collaborators:

SETTE Miriam

Cycle:

First semester

Hours of classroom activity:

Individual study hours:

114

Prerequisites:

English level: A2

Objectives

Illustration of the literary period, from the age of the Restoration up to Queen Victoria' s ascent to the throne.

Particular attention will be paid to the birth and evolution of the modern bourgeois novel, beginning with an analysis of exemplary texts by Daniel Defoe.
Through the study of some of Defoe's narratives, students will explore key aspects of the history of English thought of the long XVIII century, with a particular reference to cultural and scientific debate during this period.

Contents

The course is divided into three sections which will be organized as follows:

Part 1 (5 ECTS):
Science and pseudoscience in the eighteenth-century English novel.
Primary texts:
Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe, any edition in the original language.
Daniel Defoe, Lady Roxana, any edition in the original language.
Daniel Defoe, The Storm, any edition in the original language.

The Cambridge Companion to Daniel Defoe, ed. John Richetti, Cambridge University Press, 2008;
Miriam Sette, Il Fantastico in Robinson Crusoe. Daniel Defoe e la Ragione trasfiguratrice, Carocci, Rome 2010.

Part 2 (1 ECTS):
The Long Eighteenth Century
Reference texts: Andrew Sanders, Short Oxford History Of English Literature, 2021.

Extended Syllabus

Defoe is the ideal interpreter of the intellectual revolution that occurred during the turn from the seventeenth to the eighteenth century: that is, in the field of physics the movement from Galileo to Newton, and in the field of philosophy the movement from Bacon to Locke. Both these developments show the transition from abstract and metaphysical preconceptions towards an increasing commitment to empiricism and the formation of rationalist systems, aimed at ordering and assimilating the growing body of knowledge of natural science.

Recommended Bibliography

Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe; Lady Roxana; The Storm.

Teaching Methods

Frontal lessons

Evaluation methods

Verification of learning:

The oral final exam will consist of a number of questions (3-5) on the texts included in the syllabus, the historical context, the English culture of the Long 18th Century, and the critical bibliography in the syllabus. The exam will assess the following skills and abilities: detailed knowledge of the primary texts; ability to contextualize texts from a historical and cultural point of view; close analysis of the formal and thematic features of texts. The grading scale goes from 1 to 30 cum laude (excellent). The exam is graded: excellent (30 cum laude-30); very good (27-29); good (24-26), fair (21 -23), sufficient (18-22), insufficient (17 or below).

Contacts/More Information

As far as the period considered, ie The Long Eighteenth Century, which embraces English literary history from 1660 to 1832, the following authors are particularly relevant:

The Restoration and the Early XVIII Century (1660-1798)
John Dryden (1631-1700): "Absalom and Achitophel" (1681).
Samuel Pepys (1633-1703).
John Bunyan (1628-1688): "The Pilgrim's Progress" (1675).
William Congreve (1670-1729).
The Augustan Age
Daniel Defoe (1660? -1731).
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745).
Alexander Pope (1688-1744).
Augustan Modes in Poetry
Samuel Butler (1612-1680).
John Gay (1685-1732): "The Beggar's Opera" (1728).
The Periodical Essay
Joseph Addison (1672-1719).
Sir Richard Steele (1672-1729).
The Poetry of Sensibility
James Thomson (1700-1748): "The Seasons".
Thomas Gray (1716-1771): "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard".
William Collins (1721-1759).
Christopher Smart (1722-1771).
Oliver Goldsmith (1730-1774): "The Deserted Village".
George Crabbe (1754-1832).
William Cowper (1731-1800).
Biographies
James Boswell (1740-1795): Life of Samuel Johnson (1791).
The novel (from Richardson to Austen)
Samuel Richardson (1689-1761), Pamela.
Henry Fielding (1707-1754), Joseph Andrews.
Tobias Smollett (1721-1771), Roderick Random (1748).
Laurence Sterne (1713-1768), Tristram Shandy (1759-1767).
Oliver Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakefield (1766).
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), Rasselas (1759).
Henry Mackenzie (1745-18319), The Man of Feeling (1771).
The Gothic Novel
Horace Walpole (1717-1797), The Castle of Otranto (1765).
William Beckford (1760-1844), Vathek (1786).
Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823), The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794).
Matthew Gregory Lewis (1775-1818), The Monk (1796).
Charles Robert Maturin (1782-1824), Melmoth the Wanderer (1820)
Domestic Fiction
Fanny Burney (1752-1840), Evelina (1778).
Jane Austen (1775-1817), Pride and Prejudice (1813).

Università degli Studi
"G. d'Annunzio"

Chieti - Pescara

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