English Literature I (2007/2008)

Learning outcomes

Title of the course: Breaking the codes: (post-)impressionist narrative and (post-)imagistic poetry in Modernist England.

Aim of the course: The course will provide the students with an overview of pre-modernist and modernist narrative and poetical experimentalism in England within the context of 20th-century English literature.

Major examples of literary experimentalism in modernist England will be examined in order to highlight the breaking of traditional literary codes, in both novel and poetry writing, through a poetics of fragmentation and self-referentiality. The notions of voco-visuality and textual spatiality, as well as of realism and impersonality will be investigated in (post-)impressionist narrative and (post)-imagistic poetry. These literary phenomena will be related to the influence exerted upon modernist writers by the European pictorial avant-garde, especially as introduced into Britain and mediated by the Bloomsbury Group.

Bibliography:
Texts:

• Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier (any English edition);
• Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (any English edition);
• James Joyce, Ulysses, parte I, capitolo 3 (any English edition);
• Peter Jones (ed.), Imagist Poetry, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, (1972) 1988 (Introduction; a choice of poems will be indicated during the course);
• T.S. Eliot, Prufrock and Other Observations, in R. Sanesi (a cura di), Poesie, Milano, Bompiani, 1983 (a choice of poems will be indicated during the course).

References:

• S. Bigliazzi, Il colore del silenzio, Venezia, Marsilio, 1998, pp. 73-134, 169-196;
• G. Cianci (a cura di), Modernismo/Modernismi, Milano, Principato, 1991: R. Bianchi, “Imagismo”, pp. 112-26; V. Fortunati, “Il protomodernismo di Ford Madox Ford”, pp. 127-39; G. Cianci, “la catalizzazione futurista. La poetica del verticismo”, pp. 156-74; F. Gozzi, “La rottura dei codici: il linguaggio protagonista”, pp. 290-313;
• G. Melchiori e G. De Angelis (a cura di), Guida alla lettura dell’Ulisse di James Joyce, Milano, Mondadori, 1984, pp. 11-66, 94-106;
• A. Serpieri, “La prospettiva fenomenologia nella raccolta di Prufrock”, in ID., Le strutture profonde, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1973, pp. 89-119;
• A. Marchese, L’officina del racconto, Milano, Mondadori, pp. 69-234;
• P. Bertinetti, Storia della letteratura inglese, Tornio, Einaudi, 2000, vol. II, pp. 164-316;
• During the course students will be provided with integrative handouts.

oral exam