L0022 - ENGLISH LITERATURE I

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 reflect on gender roles and 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 four 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.