Course Title:
“Darwinian Legacies: Identities, Cultures, Beauty” will examine the role of scientific thinking including pseudo-sciences in the formation of contemporary intellectual culture, its discourses on identities, beauty, and the literary responses Darwin's ideas generated. Priviliged categories of examination will be identity, race, and class.
Course Outline:
Module 1: 3 credits
English Literature from 1830 to 2007.
Module 2: 3 credits
“Darwinian Legacies: Identities, Cultures, Beauty”
Required Reading
Primary bibliography:
- T. HARDY, Tess of the Durbervilles [1891], Penguin o Oxford
- T. HARDY, The Mayor of Casterbridge [1886], Penguin o Oxford
choose also 2 of these :
- CHARLES KINGSLEY, The Water Babies [1863], Penguin o Oxford
- E. BULWER-LYTTON, The Coming Race [1871], Penguin o Oxford
- WILKIE COLLINS, The Legacy of Cain [1889], Penguin o Oxford
- B. STOKER, Dracula [1897], Penguin o Oxford
- R.L. STEVENSON, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde [1886] Penguin o Oxford
Critical bibliography:
- GILLIAN BEER, Darwin's Plots: Evolutionary Narrative in Darwin, George Eliot, & Nineteenth-Century Fiction, London, 1983, pp. 3-26, 236-58.
- LEDGER, S., R. LUCKHURST, The fin de siècle: A Reader in Cultural History 1880-1900, 2000, pp. XIII-XXIII, 1-12, 221-23, 238-42.
- F. MARRONI, Miti e mondi vittoriani, Carocci, Roma 2004, pp. 13-69.
- R.P. DRAPER, Thomas Hardy. The Tragic Novels, Macmillan 1975, pp. 133-47.
- M.T. BINDELLA, Scena e figura nella poesia di Thomas Hardy, Pacini, Pisa 1979, pp. 45-90.
- E. SAID, Orientalism, Penguin, London 1995 [1978], cap. 1.
- Y. BEZRUCKA, Oggetti e collezioni nella letteratura dell’Ottocento, Ares, Trento 2004, parte I.
----------------------, “Thomas Hardy’s `The Woodlanders’: Tradition, Heritage and Identity”, Textus, XXI, No. 2, 2007: http://www.tilgher.it/(kqeron55hk1as1452bbfve55)/index.aspx?lang=ita&tpr=5&act=fsclst
---------------------, “`The Well-Beloved’: Thomas Hardy’s Manifesto of `Regional Aesthetics’”, in Victorian Literature and Culture, 36.1, 2008, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge: http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayIssue?iid=1625296
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For the history of literature please refer to one of these compendia:
- Norton Anthology of English Literature, vol. II, Norton, New York 2000 (suggested)
- M. Praz, Storia della letteratura inglese, Sansoni (last edit.)
- D. Daiches, A Critical History of English Literature, vol. 3 .
Suggested further readings: J.C. Wells, Longman Pronouncing Dictionary, Harlow, Pearson, 2000 (for the Italian students); Collins Cobuilt, English Language Dictionary, Collins, 2001; F. Picchi, Grande dizionario Inglese/Italiano, Italiano/Inglese, Hoepli, 1999; infine: A. Marchese, Dizionario di retorica e stilistica, Mondadori, 2002 (for the Italian students).
The course will be held in English.
Extra mural students are advised to contact me.
The primary bibliography texts must be read in English
oral exam
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