English Literature 2
A.Y. 2019/2020
Learning objectives
The course is the second step for English Literature major and is devoted to second year undergraduate students. The course analyses the development of English literature, focussing on Augustan , Romantic and High Victorian writers, covering authors active between the 1710s and the 1870s. Students will be taught how to critically read and assess complex literary works. The syllabus includes poetry, novels and dramas.
Expected learning outcomes
Knowledge: the course aims at familiarizing students with the major works and the literary history of the XVIII and XIX centuries, through the literary genres of poetry, novel, and drama.
Competence: Students will develop different reading techniques such as close reading (textual analysis) and distant reading (historical and genre assessment). The course also aims at strengthening linguistic competence with particular reference to the critical idiom and the literary language.
Students attending the classes will be stimulated to develop their critical and analytical abilities with complex literary texts in order to help them become autonomous readers in English.
Competence: Students will develop different reading techniques such as close reading (textual analysis) and distant reading (historical and genre assessment). The course also aims at strengthening linguistic competence with particular reference to the critical idiom and the literary language.
Students attending the classes will be stimulated to develop their critical and analytical abilities with complex literary texts in order to help them become autonomous readers in English.
Lesson period: First semester
Assessment methods: Esame
Assessment result: voto verbalizzato in trentesimi
Single course
This course cannot be attended as a single course. Please check our list of single courses to find the ones available for enrolment.
Course syllabus and organization
A (A-K)
Lesson period
First semester
Course syllabus
The course, entitled "From Olympus to the City of Dreadful Night", examines a selection of literary texts from the eeighteenth and the nineteenth century. The close reading of texts is complemented by an examination of their relationship and interaction with the historical context and other epistemological horizons. The selected texts will foreground contradictory representations of the English society from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century. England is represented as an ideal place or the modern Olympus, but also as an inferno, that becomes visible both in texts dealing with industrial manufacturing towns and in the poor areas of the city of London.
This is a 9 ECTS course and it is not possible to acquire 6 ECTS only. Exams can be sat with this syllabus until February 2021.
This is a 9 ECTS course and it is not possible to acquire 6 ECTS only. Exams can be sat with this syllabus until February 2021.
Prerequisites for admission
The course — entirely in English — and the primary and secondary bibliography take for granted the notions acquired during the first year. Students can sit the exam only on condition that they have passed English Literature 1 and English Language 1.
Teaching methods
The course deploys the following teaching methods: lectures with close reading and analysis of the texts; whenever it is possible clips, images and music will also be employed; students will be asked to take active part in the critical reading of the texts. It is therefore necessary that students read some of the texts during the course.
Teaching Resources
The acronym NA indicates texts from the Norton Anthology of English Literature. Students are required to study eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English literary history on one of the following university manuals: Andrew Sanders, A Short Oxford History of English Literature; alternatively: Arturo Cattaneo, Short History of English Literature. Novels must be read in a critical, unabridged edition (eg., Penguin Classics, Oxford World Classics, Norton Critical Editions). For this reason, "popular classics" series are not suitable. The slides and materials uploaded on Ariel are an integral part of the course syllabus.
Syllabus for attending students
Unit A
Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock (NA)
Samuel Johnson, "London: A Poem" (passages; online)
William Blake, "London" (NA)
William Wordsworth, "Lines Composed upon Westminster Bridge" (NA)
Unit B
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, "The Cry of the Children" (NA)
Charles Dickens, Hard Times (critical edition OUP, Penguin, Norton)
James 'B.V.' Thomson, "The City of Dreadful Night" (online)
Unit C
Percy Bysshe Shelley, "England in 1819"; "Song to the Men of England"; "Mont Blanc, Lines Written in the Vale of Chamonix" (NA)
John Keats, "Ode to a Nightingale"; "Ode on a Grecian Urn" (NA)
Robert Louis Stevenson The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (critical edition OUP, Penguin)
Oscar Wilde, De Profundis (critical edition)
All students must read a novel choosing it from each of the following groups:
GRUPPO 1 "Condition of England Question"
Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy's Progress
Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South
GRUPPO 2 "Women's Voices"
Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre
Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles
GRUPPO 3 "Children's Literature"
E. Nesbit, The Railway Children
Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden
Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Books
Syllabus for non-attending students
Students who are unable to attend the course must contact the teachers prior to the exam. Students are requested to use their @studenti.unimi.it account. In addition to the texts for attending students (including the materials uploaded on Ariel), non-attending students are requested to study:
Unit A
The Rape of the Lock, from KnowledgeNotes™ Student Guides, gen. ed. Sarah Shute, accessibile tramite il portale ProQuest Literature Online [available via the University Library website]
Marco Canani, Ellenismi britannici. L'ellenismo nella poesia, nelle arti e nella cultura britannica, dagli augustei al Romanticismo, Roma, Aracne, 2014, cap. I (pp. 29-71) ["Anglistica" library]
Michael Ferber, The Cambridge Introduction to British Romantic Poetry, Cambridge, Cambridge UP, 2012, pp. 1-13; 146-152 ["Anglistica" library]
Unità didattica B
Rosemarie Bodenheimer, "Biographical Dickens," in The Oxford Handbook of Charles Dickens, ed. R. L. Patten, J. O. Jordan, C. Waters, Oxford, Oxford UP, 2018, pp. 9-14 ["Anglistica" library]
Grahame Smith, "Hard Times for Our Times", in The Oxford Handbook of Charles Dickens, ed. R. L. Patten, J. O. Jordan, C. Waters, Oxford, Oxford UP, 2018, pp. 233-244 ["Anglistica" library]
Richard Menke, "Dickens, Industry, and Technology", in The Oxford Handbook of Charles Dickens, ed. R. L. Patten, J. O. Jordan, C. Waters, Oxford, Oxford UP, 2018, pp. 436-451 ["Anglistica" library]
Unità didattica C
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.
Merlin Holland, "Biography and the Art of Lying", in The Cambridge Companion to Oscar Wilde, ed. P. Raby, Cambridge, Cambridge UP, 1997. pp. 3-17 ["Anglistica" library ]
Richard Ambrosini, R. L. Stevenson, La poetica del romanzo, Roma, Bulzoni, 2001 ["Anglistica" library]
Course Website
Students are requested to check the Ariel online platform (http://ariel.unimi.it) regularly as new material will be uploaded during the course. The website also contains general information on the course.
Please do not use email to ask for information that may be found elsewhere (Unimi.it, www.lingue.unimi.it, https://www.unimi.it/it/chi-e-dove)
Syllabus for attending students
Unit A
Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock (NA)
Samuel Johnson, "London: A Poem" (passages; online)
William Blake, "London" (NA)
William Wordsworth, "Lines Composed upon Westminster Bridge" (NA)
Unit B
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, "The Cry of the Children" (NA)
Charles Dickens, Hard Times (critical edition OUP, Penguin, Norton)
James 'B.V.' Thomson, "The City of Dreadful Night" (online)
Unit C
Percy Bysshe Shelley, "England in 1819"; "Song to the Men of England"; "Mont Blanc, Lines Written in the Vale of Chamonix" (NA)
John Keats, "Ode to a Nightingale"; "Ode on a Grecian Urn" (NA)
Robert Louis Stevenson The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (critical edition OUP, Penguin)
Oscar Wilde, De Profundis (critical edition)
All students must read a novel choosing it from each of the following groups:
GRUPPO 1 "Condition of England Question"
Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy's Progress
Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South
GRUPPO 2 "Women's Voices"
Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre
Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles
GRUPPO 3 "Children's Literature"
E. Nesbit, The Railway Children
Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden
Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Books
Syllabus for non-attending students
Students who are unable to attend the course must contact the teachers prior to the exam. Students are requested to use their @studenti.unimi.it account. In addition to the texts for attending students (including the materials uploaded on Ariel), non-attending students are requested to study:
Unit A
The Rape of the Lock, from KnowledgeNotes™ Student Guides, gen. ed. Sarah Shute, accessibile tramite il portale ProQuest Literature Online [available via the University Library website]
Marco Canani, Ellenismi britannici. L'ellenismo nella poesia, nelle arti e nella cultura britannica, dagli augustei al Romanticismo, Roma, Aracne, 2014, cap. I (pp. 29-71) ["Anglistica" library]
Michael Ferber, The Cambridge Introduction to British Romantic Poetry, Cambridge, Cambridge UP, 2012, pp. 1-13; 146-152 ["Anglistica" library]
Unità didattica B
Rosemarie Bodenheimer, "Biographical Dickens," in The Oxford Handbook of Charles Dickens, ed. R. L. Patten, J. O. Jordan, C. Waters, Oxford, Oxford UP, 2018, pp. 9-14 ["Anglistica" library]
Grahame Smith, "Hard Times for Our Times", in The Oxford Handbook of Charles Dickens, ed. R. L. Patten, J. O. Jordan, C. Waters, Oxford, Oxford UP, 2018, pp. 233-244 ["Anglistica" library]
Richard Menke, "Dickens, Industry, and Technology", in The Oxford Handbook of Charles Dickens, ed. R. L. Patten, J. O. Jordan, C. Waters, Oxford, Oxford UP, 2018, pp. 436-451 ["Anglistica" library]
Unità didattica C
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.
Merlin Holland, "Biography and the Art of Lying", in The Cambridge Companion to Oscar Wilde, ed. P. Raby, Cambridge, Cambridge UP, 1997. pp. 3-17 ["Anglistica" library ]
Richard Ambrosini, R. L. Stevenson, La poetica del romanzo, Roma, Bulzoni, 2001 ["Anglistica" library]
Course Website
Students are requested to check the Ariel online platform (http://ariel.unimi.it) regularly as new material will be uploaded during the course. The website also contains general information on the course.
Please do not use email to ask for information that may be found elsewhere (Unimi.it, www.lingue.unimi.it, https://www.unimi.it/it/chi-e-dove)
Assessment methods and Criteria
The exam consists of an oral test assessed in thirtieths. 18 is the pass score. The test, which consists of an interview, will ascertain the understanding of literary texts (through reading and translation), the knowledge of literary history (lives and works of the authors, historical and cultural contexts), and critical abilities. Linguistic precision and connections between the texts will also be part of the assessment.
It is possible to sit the exam both in Italian and English.
The final score is expressed in thirtieths; students may accept or reject the mark - in this case it will be recorded as "ritirato" and they will have to take the whole exam again in the future.
Students with any disabilities are kindly requested to contact the teacher in order to agree on alternative examination methods, according to the current legislation.
In order to take the exam it is mandatory to bring along all the literary texts.
When registering for the exam, students are required to enlist under the teacher's name, especially when taking the exam after more than one year from the end of the course.
Exams can be sat with this syllabus until February 2021.
It is possible to sit the exam both in Italian and English.
The final score is expressed in thirtieths; students may accept or reject the mark - in this case it will be recorded as "ritirato" and they will have to take the whole exam again in the future.
Students with any disabilities are kindly requested to contact the teacher in order to agree on alternative examination methods, according to the current legislation.
In order to take the exam it is mandatory to bring along all the literary texts.
When registering for the exam, students are required to enlist under the teacher's name, especially when taking the exam after more than one year from the end of the course.
Exams can be sat with this syllabus until February 2021.
Unita' didattica A
L-LIN/10 - ENGLISH LITERATURE - University credits: 3
Lessons: 20 hours
Professor:
Orestano Francesca
Shifts:
-
Professor:
Orestano Francesca
Unita' didattica B
L-LIN/10 - ENGLISH LITERATURE - University credits: 3
Lessons: 20 hours
Professor:
Orestano Francesca
Shifts:
-
Professor:
Orestano Francesca
Unita' didattica C
L-LIN/10 - ENGLISH LITERATURE - University credits: 3
Lessons: 20 hours
Professor:
Canani Marco
Shifts:
-
Professor:
Canani MarcoB (L-Z)
Responsible
Lesson period
First semester
Course syllabus
The course, entitled "Life and narrative of literary objects", addresses some canonical texts from the Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries through Bill Brown's "Thing Theory", which is developed and adapted to literary criticism from Heidegger's philosophy. Texts from Restoration, Neoclassicism, Romanticism, and Victorian Age will be examined from the standpoint of material culture. Students will be encouraged to realise how things and objects participate in the formation of meaning in both prose and poetry.
This is a 9 CFU course and it is not possible to acquire 6 CFU only. The course expires after February 2021.
This is a 9 CFU course and it is not possible to acquire 6 CFU only. The course expires after February 2021.
Prerequisites for admission
The course — entirely in English — and the primary and secondary bibliography take for granted the notions taught during the first year. Students can sit the exam only on condition that they have passed English Literature 1 and English Language 1.
Teaching methods
The course deploys the following teaching methods: lectures with close reading and analysis of the texts; whenever it is possible clips, images and music will also be employed; students will be asked to take active part in the critical reading of the texts. It is therefore necessary that students read some of the texts during the course.
Teaching Resources
Most primary and secondary texts can be freely downloaded from the internet. We particularly recommend the website Literature Online, which can be reached free through the University Library Website http://metalib.lib.unimi.it/V/?func=find-db-1&mode=title
Students who cannot possibly attend the course are strongly recommended to read the novels in the Norton Critical Editions, when available, while those who attend the course may choose any available edition, including eBooks. Past experience shows that eBooks do not work well with poetry. All texts must be studied in English.
Syllabus for attending Sudents
Unit A
Paul Poplawski, English Literature in Context, OUP, 2nd edition. Only the parts connected with the programme, excluding the close reading of works that are not part of the syllabus.
Fludernik, Monika. Narratology. From Encyclopaedia of the Novel. (Literature Online)
Unit B
- Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock
- Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto, any edition.
- William Hogarth. "The Harlot's Progress", "Gin Lane".
- William Blake, "The Lamb", "The Tyger", "The Chimney Sweeper", "Holy Thursday", "The Rose", "London".
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "Kubla Khan".
- William Wordsworth, "Strange Fits of Passion have I Known", "She Dwelt among Untrodden Ways", "Three Years she Grew", "I Travelled among Unknown Men", "A Slumber did my Spirit Seal", "I wandered lonely as a cloud".
Unit C
- John Keats, "Ode on a Grecian Urn"
- George Gordon Byron, Manfred.
- Mary Shelley, Frankenstein. Norton Critical Edition mandatory for non-attending, Penguin or OUP Critical Edition.
- Percy B. Shelley, "The Mask of Anarchy", "Ozymandias", "On a Faded Violet", "Song to the Men of England"
- Robert Browning, "My Last Duchess"
- Alfred Tennyson, "The Lady of Shalott", "Break Break, Break"
- Charles Dickens, Bleak House; mandatory for non-attending, Penguin or OUP Critical Edition.
All students must read one novel from each of the following groups.
1. 'Condition of England' Novel
· Charles Dickens, Hard Times
· Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South
2. Women's Voices
· Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
· Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
· Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles
3. Children's Literature
· Edith Nesbit, The Railway Children
· Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden
· Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book
Non-attending students
Students who cannot attended the course will study also the following aid material (which can be dowloaded starting from the library website www.sba.unimi.it/BibliotecaDigitale/46.html)
Unit A
John Plotz. "Can the Sofa Speak? A Look at Thing Theory." Criticism 47, no. 1 (2005): 109-118.
Sattaur, Jennifer. "Thinking Objectively: An Overview of 'Thing Theory' In Victorian Studies." Victorian Literature and Culture 40, no. 1 (2012): 347-57.
Abbott, H. Porter: "Story, plot, and narration" See Herman, David (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Narrative Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press 2007 (2007)
Unit B
The Rape of the Lock from KnowledgeNotes™ Student Guides Shute, Sarah (Gen. Ed.).
Psomiades, Kathy Alexis, "The Lady of Shalott"" and the Critical Fortunes of Victorian Poetry in Bristow, Joseph (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Victorian Poetry Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press 2005.
-
Unit C
Alessandro Vescovi, "Romantic Irony as Epistemological Device in Bleak House" https://www.academia.edu/1627219/Romantic_Irony_as_an_Epistemological_Device_in_Bleak_House
Course Website
All students are supposed to check on the Ariel online platform (http://ariel.unimi.it) regularly as new material will be uploaded during the course. The website also contains general information on the course.
Please do not use email to ask for information that may be found elsewhere (Unimi.it, www.lingue.unimi.it, https://www.unimi.it/it/chi-e-dove)
Students who cannot possibly attend the course are strongly recommended to read the novels in the Norton Critical Editions, when available, while those who attend the course may choose any available edition, including eBooks. Past experience shows that eBooks do not work well with poetry. All texts must be studied in English.
Syllabus for attending Sudents
Unit A
Paul Poplawski, English Literature in Context, OUP, 2nd edition. Only the parts connected with the programme, excluding the close reading of works that are not part of the syllabus.
Fludernik, Monika. Narratology. From Encyclopaedia of the Novel. (Literature Online)
Unit B
- Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock
- Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto, any edition.
- William Hogarth. "The Harlot's Progress", "Gin Lane".
- William Blake, "The Lamb", "The Tyger", "The Chimney Sweeper", "Holy Thursday", "The Rose", "London".
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "Kubla Khan".
- William Wordsworth, "Strange Fits of Passion have I Known", "She Dwelt among Untrodden Ways", "Three Years she Grew", "I Travelled among Unknown Men", "A Slumber did my Spirit Seal", "I wandered lonely as a cloud".
Unit C
- John Keats, "Ode on a Grecian Urn"
- George Gordon Byron, Manfred.
- Mary Shelley, Frankenstein. Norton Critical Edition mandatory for non-attending, Penguin or OUP Critical Edition.
- Percy B. Shelley, "The Mask of Anarchy", "Ozymandias", "On a Faded Violet", "Song to the Men of England"
- Robert Browning, "My Last Duchess"
- Alfred Tennyson, "The Lady of Shalott", "Break Break, Break"
- Charles Dickens, Bleak House; mandatory for non-attending, Penguin or OUP Critical Edition.
All students must read one novel from each of the following groups.
1. 'Condition of England' Novel
· Charles Dickens, Hard Times
· Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South
2. Women's Voices
· Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
· Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
· Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles
3. Children's Literature
· Edith Nesbit, The Railway Children
· Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden
· Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book
Non-attending students
Students who cannot attended the course will study also the following aid material (which can be dowloaded starting from the library website www.sba.unimi.it/BibliotecaDigitale/46.html)
Unit A
John Plotz. "Can the Sofa Speak? A Look at Thing Theory." Criticism 47, no. 1 (2005): 109-118.
Sattaur, Jennifer. "Thinking Objectively: An Overview of 'Thing Theory' In Victorian Studies." Victorian Literature and Culture 40, no. 1 (2012): 347-57.
Abbott, H. Porter: "Story, plot, and narration" See Herman, David (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Narrative Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press 2007 (2007)
Unit B
The Rape of the Lock from KnowledgeNotes™ Student Guides Shute, Sarah (Gen. Ed.).
Psomiades, Kathy Alexis, "The Lady of Shalott"" and the Critical Fortunes of Victorian Poetry in Bristow, Joseph (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Victorian Poetry Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press 2005.
-
Unit C
Alessandro Vescovi, "Romantic Irony as Epistemological Device in Bleak House" https://www.academia.edu/1627219/Romantic_Irony_as_an_Epistemological_Device_in_Bleak_House
Course Website
All students are supposed to check on the Ariel online platform (http://ariel.unimi.it) regularly as new material will be uploaded during the course. The website also contains general information on the course.
Please do not use email to ask for information that may be found elsewhere (Unimi.it, www.lingue.unimi.it, https://www.unimi.it/it/chi-e-dove)
Assessment methods and Criteria
The exam consists in an oral test assessed in thirtieths. 18 is the pass score. The test, which consists in an interview, will ascertain the understanding of literary texts (through reading and translation), the knowledge of literary history (news on the authors, historical and cultural contexts), and critical abilities. Linguistic precision and connections between the texts will also be part of the assessment.
It is possible to sit the exam both in Italian and English.
The final score is expressed in thirtieths; students may accept or reject the mark - in this case it will be recorded as "ritirato" and they will have to take the whole exam again in the future.
Students with any disabilities are kindly requested to contact the teacher in order to agree on alternative examination methods, according to the current legislation.
In order to take the exam it is mandatory to bring along all the literary texts.
When registering for the exam, students are required to enlist under the teacher's name, especially when taking the exam after more than one year from the end of the course.
The present syllabus expires after February 2021.
It is possible to sit the exam both in Italian and English.
The final score is expressed in thirtieths; students may accept or reject the mark - in this case it will be recorded as "ritirato" and they will have to take the whole exam again in the future.
Students with any disabilities are kindly requested to contact the teacher in order to agree on alternative examination methods, according to the current legislation.
In order to take the exam it is mandatory to bring along all the literary texts.
When registering for the exam, students are required to enlist under the teacher's name, especially when taking the exam after more than one year from the end of the course.
The present syllabus expires after February 2021.
Unita' didattica A
L-LIN/10 - ENGLISH LITERATURE - University credits: 3
Lessons: 20 hours
Unita' didattica B
L-LIN/10 - ENGLISH LITERATURE - University credits: 3
Lessons: 20 hours
Unita' didattica C
L-LIN/10 - ENGLISH LITERATURE - University credits: 3
Lessons: 20 hours
Professor(s)