Modern humanities

Activity type

Attività formative affini o integrative

SSD

L-LIN/10

Year

N/D

Semester

N/D

CFU

6

Hours distribution

42 classroom hours

Lecturers

ALESSANDRA CROTTI
ALESSANDRA CROTTI

Activity type

Attività formative affini o integrative

SSD

L-LIN/10

Year

N/D

Semester

N/D

CFU

6

Hours distribution

42 classroom hours

Lecturers

ALESSANDRA CROTTI
ALESSANDRA CROTTI

The students will acquire good knowledge in English Literature, paying attention to the latest developments in the disciplinary debate and bibliography. The students will be able to collect data for a critical judgment. The students will therefore be able to use their knowledge in critical thinking, in addressing open issues, in implementing methods of study and research. The students will manage to communicate the results of their work both to specialists and to a broader audience.

Module: English Literature I
N/D
Module: English Literature II
N/D

Module: English Literature I
N/D
Module: English Literature II
N/D

Module: English Literature I
Narratives and Counter-Narratives: The Writer as Political Intellectual

This course aims to explore the possibility of identifying, within the British context of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, the figure of the writer as an intellectual engaged in the political sphere, in dialogue and continuity with the broader European and transnational debate on the public role of the intellectual, forms of engagement, and the relationship between cultural production, institutions, and power.
Through the analysis of poetic, narrative, and theatrical texts, the course seeks to show how literature can function not only as a representation of reality but also as a tool for intervention in the public sphere, capable of challenging dominant narratives and producing critical counter-narratives with respect to national identities, collective memories, and power structures.

Part 1 – The Intellectual Question in Great Britain
The first part of the course will be devoted to a theoretical and historical framing of the emergence of the engagé intellectual in the twentieth century, with particular attention to the specificities of the British context. It will discuss models of public intervention by intellectuals, the tensions between artistic autonomy and political responsibility, and the reasons why, compared to other European contexts, Great Britain has often displayed a problematic and ambivalent relationship with the very idea of the “intellectual.” This introductory section will provide the conceptual tools necessary to understand the forms taken by political engagement in British literature of the past century, interrogating notions such as cultural authority, the legitimacy of public intervention, and the social function of writing.

Part 2 – Examples of Intellectual Action in the Era of the Thatcher Government
The second part of the course will focus on the analysis of a selection of experiences of political engagement by writers, poets, and playwrights, with particular attention to the historical and cultural context of the years of the Thatcher government. The works under consideration will be read by relating the authors’ aesthetic choices to the function of writing as a form of intervention in the public sphere. Special attention will be paid to literature as a political tool, capable of giving voice to marginalized subjectivities, critically interrogating hegemonic narratives of national identity, and intervening on issues such as colonialism and postcolonialism, structural racism, institutional violence, historical memory, gender, and power dynamics. Through poetic, narrative, and theatrical texts, the course will analyze how literature becomes a space of symbolic conflict and political negotiation, as well as a privileged site for rethinking the role of the intellectual in times of crisis.
The critical path will be structured around works by authors who have made writing an explicit form of public political positioning. The poems of L.K. Johnson, taken from the collection Mi Revalueshanary Fren, will offer an opportunity to reflect on poetic language as a tool of political denunciation and of reinscribing Black voices into British history. The poems of Jay Bernard, from Surge, will allow for an analysis of the relationship between memory, institutional violence, and community, highlighting the role of the poet as a witness and critical interpreter of the past. The novel The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie will be examined as an emblematic case of conflict between literature, religion, politics, and institutions, as well as a complex reflection on freedom of expression and the responsibility of the intellectual in the global public sphere. The theatre of Caryl Churchill, particularly Top Girls, will make it possible to explore the relationships between feminism, neoliberal ideology, and power, showing how dramatic writing can function as a political critique of social structures and the rhetorics of individual success.

Part 3 – Contemporary Extensions: Writing, Migration, and Conflict
The course will conclude with three in-depth studies that extend the discussion to the contemporary period, showing how literature continues to be used as a tool for action and reflection in the political field, in a context marked by global mobility, diasporic identities, and transnational conflicts.
1) The poems of Daljit Nagra, taken from Look We Have Coming to Dover!, Tippoo Sultan’s Incredible White-Man-Eating Tiger Toy-Machine!!!, and British Museum, will prompt reflection on the relationship between language, diasporic identity, and colonial history, highlighting the role of the poet as a critical mediator between cultures and as a producer of counter-narratives to the national canon.
2) Texts by Xu Xi, from Evanescent Isles: From My City-Village and Monkey in Residence & Other Speculations, will offer a transnational perspective on identity, migration, and belonging, expanding the discussion of the intellectual beyond British national borders and interrogating writing as a space of negotiation among places, languages, and memories.
3) Finally, the novel Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad will be analyzed as a recent example of politically engaged writing, capable of intertwining theatre, historical memory, and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, critically questioning the role of the artist and the intellectual in contexts of violence, occupation, and ethical responsibility.


Module: English Literature II
The first part of the course will focus on the theme of wandering in twentieth-century literature in English. In particular, the course will examine three emblematic case studies: Ulysses (1922) by James Joyce, The Lonely Londoners (1965) by Sam Selvon, and The Satanic Verses (1988) by Salman Rushdie. Attention will be devoted especially to the literary evolution of the theme of wandering in the urban context, highlighting the modernist legacy of Ulysses in the works of Selvon and Rushdie. Overall, the three authors - though writing in different periods and contexts - develop, through the figure of the wanderer, a veritable alternative cartography of modern cities, in which individual trajectories become tools for exploration, resistance, and re-signification of urban spaces.

Part 1 – The Joycean Wanderer
The first part will be dedicated to the figure of the Joycean wanderer. After a historical and cultural introduction to the figure of the Wanderer in folklore and literature, five episodes from Ulysses will be examined, in which the physical and identity-based wandering of the three protagonists becomes inextricably linked to the urban space of Dublin and its political, social, and cultural tensions.

Part 2 – Wandering and Migration: The Windrush Generation
The second part will focus on the migrants of the Windrush generation, who settled in London starting in 1948. Following an introduction to the history of migration in Britain, the course will turn to a reading of Sam Selvon’s novel The Lonely Londoners, which depicts the wandering of a group of Afro-Caribbean migrants through the streets of the British capital, in a laborious process of familiarization and appropriation of the urban environment.

Part 3 – Wandering, Resistance, and Transgression
The third part will be devoted to the analysis of selected sections from the novel The Satanic Verses, set between Bombay and London during the years of Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government—a period marked by increasingly restrictive immigration policies and rising racial tensions. Here too, urban wandering will serve as the guiding thread for interpreting the protagonists’ trajectories, bringing to light the underlying dialogue with Joyce’s model and with the modernist tradition.

Module: English Literature I
N/D
Module: English Literature II
James Joyce, Ulysses, episodes 1. Telemacus, 4. Calypso, 13. Nausicaa, 15. Circe, 19. Penelope – suggested edition: The Gabler Edition
Sam Selvon, The Lonely Londoners (1956)
Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses, I: The Angel Gibreel, section 1; III: Ellowen Deeowen, sections 1 e 3; V: A City Visible but Unseen, section 1

Module: English Literature I
N/D
Module: English Literature II
Peter Clarke, Hope and Glory. Briatin 1900 - 2000
Don Gifford, Ulysses Annotated
Harry Blamires, The New Bloomsday Book: A Guide Through Ulysses
Abdulrazak Gurnah, The Cambridge Companion to Salman Rushdie

Module: English Literature I
N/D
Module: English Literature II
N/D

Module: English Literature I
N/D
Module: English Literature II
N/D

Module: English Literature I
N/D
Module: English Literature II
N/D

Module: English Literature I
N/D
Module: English Literature II
N/D

Module: English Literature I
N/D
Module: English Literature II
N/D