ANGLOPHONE LITERATURES
cod. 1000633

Academic year 2008/09
2° year of course - First semester
Professor
Academic discipline
Letteratura inglese (L-LIN/10)
Field
Discipline delle letterature straniere
Type of training activity
Characterising
40 hours
of face-to-face activities
5 credits
hub:
course unit
in - - -

Learning objectives

<ol>
<li>
<div>Introduce the students to the discourses of postmodernity, postcoloniality and orientalism, which are useful to a theoretical approach to the selected texts; </div>
</li>
<li>
<div>Provide the students with the guidelines in order to analyze a narrative text in its essential and structural components (both for an oral presentation and for a written essay); </div>
</li>
<li>
<div>Give an overview of the most important features and directions in the contemporary novel in the various geographical areas involved: English, Scottish, American and Iranian-American;</div>
</li>
<li>
<div>Introduce the students to contemporary novels that are rarely included in academic curricula, but that, in fact, are highly representative of the heterogeneity of style, genre and language that is typical of modernist and postmodern fiction. <br />
</div>
</li>
</ol>

Prerequisites

- - -

Course unit content

 <strong>Places and figures of teaching in the contemporary novel in English <br />
</strong><br />
After a brief historical and literary excursus on the discourse(s) of Anglophone literatures and on Canon revision, the course aims to guide the students in the close reading of seven contemporary novels by authors coming from different cultures and traditions. These texts describe educational and academic contexts by focusing on complex figures of teachers and tackling various issues that the students will be asked to discuss in class, in particular: the relationship between teacher and pupil; the role of the educational context; the importance of reading in any school or academic setting; the meaning of humanities studies in an age in which they seem to become more and more secondary compared to scientific and economic subjects. <br />

Full programme

- - -

Bibliography

a) Primary texts: 3 novels among the following (possibly one for each group) <br />
<br />
1) Scottish novel: <br />
Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961) <br />
William McIlvanney, Weekend (2006) <br />
<br />
2) English novel: <br />
Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim (1954) <br />
David Lodge, Changing Places (1975) <br />
<br />
3) American novel: <br />
Willa Cather, The Professor’s House (1925) <br />
Bernard Malamud, A New Life (1961) <br />
<br />
4) Novel in English: <br />
Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Teheran (2004) <br />
<br />
Secondary texts <br />
<br />
1) One of the following texts: <br />
Roland Bourneuf, Réal Ouellet, L' universo del romanzo (1976) <br />
David Lodge, The Art of Fiction (1992) <br />
John Peck, How to Study Novel (1990) [Disponibile presso la Biblioteca Guanda] <br />
<br />
2) Two critical essays for each of the selected novels (provided by the teacher)

Teaching methods

<p><strong>Teaching methodology</strong>: oral lesson combined with class analyses and discussions of the selected texts</p>
<p><strong>Evaluation</strong>: before the oral exam, the students will have to write a short essay (about 1500-2000 words) on one of the novels they selected or on a topic they can choose freely.</p>

Assessment methods and criteria

- - -

Other information

- - -