LT0039 - ENGLISH LITERATURE

The aim of the course unit is to make students acquire theoretical, critical and methodological abilities in relation to the study of literature. Students must be able to read and interpret literary texts in English (both prose and poetry) and their contexts, and to appreciate their stylistic characteristics; moreover, the course aims at developing powers of critical/analytical thinking alongside an appreciation of the craft of writing and the interrelationships between texts, together with the ability to apply such techniques to primary/secondary texts. Module 1 will investigate nineteenth-century English culture and society by means of some canonical novels by Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, Charlotte Brontë and Charles Dickens. Module 2 will start from the cultural context following the Second World War to explore Philip Larkin’s poetry whose innovative feature lies in the return to pre-modernist poetic style and diction. Critical and methodological support will be given to students at the beginning of the course.
Abilities: At the end of the course students must be able to discuss and interpret the underlying values of nineteenth-century English society and to appreciate how issues such as gender, religion and science affected attitudes; students must be able to compare, evaluate and interpret primary sources in order to develop and support historical arguments and to communicate their own ideas successfully to debates about Romantic and Victorian Britain.
Self-assessment: Students must demonstrate a knowledge and understanding of key theoretical issues, show an ability to close read and analyse both primary texts and relevant theoretical interventions, and finally demonstrate an ability to develop an independent critical position in relation to these.
Communicative skills: Students must evidence an ability to talk about contexts, topics and narrative modes related to the primary texts in a clear and appropriate way, and to enter literary texts into a dialogue with theoretical texts.