English Literature (MA)
A.Y. 2024/2025
Learning objectives
This course intends to provide students with reading paths and critical analysis of texts belonging to English literature produced in different periods and places. It follows thematic clusters according to diachronic and/or synchronic perspectives and offers students several critical approaches to literary texts. In addition, it aims at reflecting on the English literary canon and on its transformations through time. It also explores intertextual mechanisms and structures through different literary genres.
Expected learning outcomes
KNOWLEDGE: By the end of the course, students should be able to discuss the main issues and questions concerning the discipline, to place the literary texts included in the course within the cultural and literary context in which they were produced, and to provide thematic and critical interpretations of the literary works included in the programme. LINGUISTIC AND LITERARY ABILITIES: Students should be able to read the texts and acknowledge their linguistic complexity. Students should also be able to critically analyse the texts included in the programme and be able to connect different authors, texts and literary trends. They should demonstrate understanding of different critical approaches and of the various levels of textual interpretation. In addition, students are expected to express themselves with clarity and precision and to use the specific terminology of the discipline correctly.
Lesson period: Second semester
Assessment methods: Esame
Assessment result: voto verbalizzato in trentesimi
Single course
This course can be attended as a single course.
Course syllabus and organization
Single session
Responsible
Lesson period
Second semester
Course syllabus
"From page to screen: Reading and adapting writers and texts"
Unit A (20 hrs, 3 ECTS - Prof. M. Canani): Romantic Biopics
Unit B (20 ore, 3 ECTS - Prof. M. Canani): Reading Jane, Adapting Austen
Unit C (20 ore, 3 ECTS - Prof. M. Cavecchi): Intermedial Hamlet
Unit A (20 hrs, 3 ECTS - Prof. M. Canani): Romantic Biopics
Unit B (20 ore, 3 ECTS - Prof. M. Canani): Reading Jane, Adapting Austen
Unit C (20 ore, 3 ECTS - Prof. M. Cavecchi): Intermedial Hamlet
Prerequisites for admission
The course is taught in English. Students are expected to possess adequate language skills in order to read literary and critical texts and discuss them in English. Moreover, students are expected to have a solid knowledge of English literary history.
Teaching methods
Lectures; close reading of the texts, discussions and debates; students are encouraged to participate actively in class
Teaching Resources
READING LIST FOR ATTENDING STUDENTS
LION (Literature Online) DATABASE https://www.sba.unimi.it/ > Literature Online > Opere di riferimento > nome dell'autore > ProQuest Biography
Julie Sanders, Adaption and Appropriation, 2nd ed., London and New York, Routledge, 2016: capp. 1-2 (Biblioteca di Anglistica)
PRIMARY TEXTS
UNIT A: ROMANTIC BIOPICS
George Gordon Byron, "Darkness", "Prometheus"; Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (Canto IV, selected passages); Manfred (edizione Marsilio a cura di D. Saglia, 2019)
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Alastor; or, The Spirit of Solitude, "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty", Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats
John Keats, "Sonnet to Byron", Endymion: A Poetic Romance (Book I, selected passages); "Bright star", When I Have Fears", "On Fame", "Ode to a Nightingale"
visione dei film Rowing in the Wind (di Gonzalo Suárez, 1988), Bright Star (di Jane Campion, 2009)
UNIT B: READING JANE, ADAPTING AUSTEN
Jane Austen, "Plan of a Novel according to Hints from Various Quarters" (online)
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (edizione critica Penguin o Oxford Classics)
Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey (edizione critica Penguin o Oxford Classics)
visione del film Becoming Jane (di Julian Jarrold, 2007)
Anthony Mandal, Jane Austen and the Popular Novel: The Determined Author, Basingstoke and New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007: capp. 2-3 (Biblioteca di Anglistica)
UNIT C: INTERMEDIAL HAMLET
William Shakespeare, Hamlet Prince of Denmark, The New Cambridge Shakespeare, Cambridge UP, Cambridge, 2019
Visione del film per la BBC per la regia di Gregory Doran, Hamlet (2009)
Visione del film per RSC Live Cinema per la regia di Simon Godwin e Robin Lough, Hamlet (2016)
Sébastien Lefait, "This same strict and most observant watch" (1.1.71): Gregory Doran's Hamlet as Surveillance Adaptation, in https://borrowers-ojs-azsu.tdl.org/borrowers/article/view/138/274 (caricato in Ariel)
Pascale Aebischer, "Hamlet in Parts: Robin Lough's RSC Live Cinema Broadcast of Simon Godwin's Hamlet (8 June 2016)", in Shakespeare, Spectatorship and the Technologies of Performance, Cambridge, Cambridge UP, 2020, pp. 157-90 (biblioteca digitale di UNIMI).
M. Cavecchi, "Tagging the Bard: Shakespeare Graffiti on and off Stage", Shakespeare Survey 69, 2016, pp. 361-79.
M. Cavecchi, "Shakespeare's or Banksy's? Looking for Hamlet in Street Art", in Shakespeare Personal Trainer, edited by M. Rose, C. Paravano, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2018, pp. 157-180. (caricato in Ariel)
Ulteriori letture saranno segnalate durante il corso.
READING LIST FOR NON-ATTENDING STUDENTS
UNIT A. In addition to the reading list for attending students:
Drummond Bone (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Byron, Cambridge, Cambridge UP, 2004: i saggi di Alan Rawes e Drummond Bone
Michael O'Neill, Anthony Howe and Madeleine Callaghan (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Oxford, Oxford UP, 2012 (Biblioteca di Anglistica): i saggi di Mark Sandy, Michael O'Neill e Kelvin Everest
Marco Canani, "Remediating a Literary Genre: Jane Campion's Bright Star and John Keats's Biographies in the 2010s", in Remediating Imagination: Literatures and Cultures in English from the Renaissance to the Postcolonial, ed. G. Angeletti, G. Buonanno and D. Saglia, Roma, Carocci, 2016, pp. 227-236
UNIT B. In addition to the reading list for attending students:
Juliette Wells, Everybody's Jane: Jane Austen in the Popular Imagination, London and New York, Continuum, 2011: capp. 1, 5
UNIT C. In addition to the reading list for attending students:
Pascale Aebischer, "Introduction. Shakespeare, Spectatorship and the Technologies of Performance", in Shakespeare, Spectatorship and the Technologies of Performance, Cambridge, Cambridge UP, 2020, pp. 1-32 (biblioteca digitale UNIMI).
Douglas Lanier, Shakespeare and Modern Popular Culture, Oxford, Oxford UP, 2002 (in biblioteca di Anglistica).
LION (Literature Online) DATABASE https://www.sba.unimi.it/ > Literature Online > Opere di riferimento > nome dell'autore > ProQuest Biography
Julie Sanders, Adaption and Appropriation, 2nd ed., London and New York, Routledge, 2016: capp. 1-2 (Biblioteca di Anglistica)
PRIMARY TEXTS
UNIT A: ROMANTIC BIOPICS
George Gordon Byron, "Darkness", "Prometheus"; Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (Canto IV, selected passages); Manfred (edizione Marsilio a cura di D. Saglia, 2019)
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Alastor; or, The Spirit of Solitude, "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty", Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats
John Keats, "Sonnet to Byron", Endymion: A Poetic Romance (Book I, selected passages); "Bright star", When I Have Fears", "On Fame", "Ode to a Nightingale"
visione dei film Rowing in the Wind (di Gonzalo Suárez, 1988), Bright Star (di Jane Campion, 2009)
UNIT B: READING JANE, ADAPTING AUSTEN
Jane Austen, "Plan of a Novel according to Hints from Various Quarters" (online)
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (edizione critica Penguin o Oxford Classics)
Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey (edizione critica Penguin o Oxford Classics)
visione del film Becoming Jane (di Julian Jarrold, 2007)
Anthony Mandal, Jane Austen and the Popular Novel: The Determined Author, Basingstoke and New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007: capp. 2-3 (Biblioteca di Anglistica)
UNIT C: INTERMEDIAL HAMLET
William Shakespeare, Hamlet Prince of Denmark, The New Cambridge Shakespeare, Cambridge UP, Cambridge, 2019
Visione del film per la BBC per la regia di Gregory Doran, Hamlet (2009)
Visione del film per RSC Live Cinema per la regia di Simon Godwin e Robin Lough, Hamlet (2016)
Sébastien Lefait, "This same strict and most observant watch" (1.1.71): Gregory Doran's Hamlet as Surveillance Adaptation, in https://borrowers-ojs-azsu.tdl.org/borrowers/article/view/138/274 (caricato in Ariel)
Pascale Aebischer, "Hamlet in Parts: Robin Lough's RSC Live Cinema Broadcast of Simon Godwin's Hamlet (8 June 2016)", in Shakespeare, Spectatorship and the Technologies of Performance, Cambridge, Cambridge UP, 2020, pp. 157-90 (biblioteca digitale di UNIMI).
M. Cavecchi, "Tagging the Bard: Shakespeare Graffiti on and off Stage", Shakespeare Survey 69, 2016, pp. 361-79.
M. Cavecchi, "Shakespeare's or Banksy's? Looking for Hamlet in Street Art", in Shakespeare Personal Trainer, edited by M. Rose, C. Paravano, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2018, pp. 157-180. (caricato in Ariel)
Ulteriori letture saranno segnalate durante il corso.
READING LIST FOR NON-ATTENDING STUDENTS
UNIT A. In addition to the reading list for attending students:
Drummond Bone (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Byron, Cambridge, Cambridge UP, 2004: i saggi di Alan Rawes e Drummond Bone
Michael O'Neill, Anthony Howe and Madeleine Callaghan (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Oxford, Oxford UP, 2012 (Biblioteca di Anglistica): i saggi di Mark Sandy, Michael O'Neill e Kelvin Everest
Marco Canani, "Remediating a Literary Genre: Jane Campion's Bright Star and John Keats's Biographies in the 2010s", in Remediating Imagination: Literatures and Cultures in English from the Renaissance to the Postcolonial, ed. G. Angeletti, G. Buonanno and D. Saglia, Roma, Carocci, 2016, pp. 227-236
UNIT B. In addition to the reading list for attending students:
Juliette Wells, Everybody's Jane: Jane Austen in the Popular Imagination, London and New York, Continuum, 2011: capp. 1, 5
UNIT C. In addition to the reading list for attending students:
Pascale Aebischer, "Introduction. Shakespeare, Spectatorship and the Technologies of Performance", in Shakespeare, Spectatorship and the Technologies of Performance, Cambridge, Cambridge UP, 2020, pp. 1-32 (biblioteca digitale UNIMI).
Douglas Lanier, Shakespeare and Modern Popular Culture, Oxford, Oxford UP, 2002 (in biblioteca di Anglistica).
Assessment methods and Criteria
The oral exam assesses the students' knowledge of the course contents/reading list, their critical thinking skills, their ability to apply critical concepts to the analysis of texts, and their ability to communicate in English.
Students will be graded as follows: 1-17 Fail, 18-21 satisfactory, 22-24 fairly good, 25-27 good, 28-29 very good, 30-30 cum laude excellent
Students will be graded as follows: 1-17 Fail, 18-21 satisfactory, 22-24 fairly good, 25-27 good, 28-29 very good, 30-30 cum laude excellent
L-LIN/10 - ENGLISH LITERATURE - University credits: 9
Lessons: 60 hours
Professors:
Canani Marco, Cavecchi Mariacristina
Professor(s)
Reception:
31/1, 8.30am; 7/2, 4.30pm. Teams: i2vrlh3.
Teams