New literatures in English (2011/2012)

Learning outcomes

The course aims at making the students familiar with the main themes and theoretical issues qualifying colonial and postcolonial literatures in English. This is done through an in-depth analysis of representative texts that are approached through their textual dynamics in the long diachronic view but with special care for their specific contexts.

A Passage from India to Black Britain: from the Empire ‘out there’ to the empire within postcolonial London

After introducing the discipline, through the close analysis of representative literary texts the course will tackle the ideological and cultural tropes of the imperial mythology, the essentialisms of the racial imaginary, and the Anglo-centric constructions of Britishness. In the collapse of fixed cartographies of identity and belonging, when the imperial ‘beyond’ ‘invades’ and hybridizes the postcolonial, diasporic metropopolis, not only the colonial fiction of British subjecthood but any exclusionary and essentialist definition of identity are energetically interrogated and undermined.


BIBLIOGRAPHY
Testi primari
- E.M. FORSTER, A Passage to India, (1924), Penguin (ed. O. Stallybrass)
- S. SELVON, Moses Ascending, (1975), Penguin
- H. KUREISHI, My Beautiful Laundrette and The Rainbow Sign, (1986), Faber and Faber (è inoltre prevista,obbligatoriamente, la visione del film di S. Frears)

Testi secondari (reperibili presso la biblioteca A. Frinzi)
- B. Parry, “The Politics of Representation” (ch.8) in J. Tambling (ed.), E.M. Forster, Macmillan, 1995
- R. Salick, The Novels of Sam Selvon, ch. 9: 131-144 (Moses Ascending), 2001
- K. C. Kaleta, Hanif Kureishi Postcolonial Storyteller, U. of Texas P., 1998, 39-61
Alla suddetta bibliografia critica gli studenti non-frequentanti aggiungeranno:
- P. Childs, “A Passage to India” (ch.12)) e P. Morey, “Postcolonial Forster” (ch.16) in D. Bradshaw (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to E.M. Forster, Cambridge U.P., 2007
- M. Looker, Atlantic Passages: History, Community, and Language in the Fiction of Sam Selvon, ch.9 :167-188, Peter Lang, 1996
- S. Manferlotti, “Hanif Kureishi” (cap. 4) in Dopo l’Impero. Romanzo ed etnia in Gran Bretagna, Liguori, 1995
- A. Dawson, Mongrel Nation: diasporic culture and the making of postcolonial Britain, U. of Michigan P. , 2007 Introduzione parte su S. Selvon)

Handbook
Il manuale di riferimento è: B. Ashcroft, G. Griffiths, H. Tiffin (eds.),The Empire Writes Back. Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures, Routledge, 1989 (specificamente, l’introduzione, i capitoli 2 e 5)
Per chi non abbia mai seguito un corso di letteratura coloniale/postcoloniale in lingua inglese (soprattutto se studente non-frequentante), può essere utile integrare con A. Loomba, “Situating Colonial and Postcolonial Studies”, in Colonialism/Postcolonialism, Routledge, 1998, pp.1-94

oral examination