Advanced knowledge of the English language

Designed to introduce and apply the functions of theory and criticism to the close reading of poetry in the modern British tradition. The course will focus on textual analytical skills in relation to different approaches and different poetic genres and sub-genres; distinguish different levels of textual interaction (descriptive/appreciative; cognitive/interpretive, practical/didactic); foster critical thinking and original writing; invite compatible reflections on teaching techniques and methods

Starting with some of the most authoritative statements in the field of poetry and poetics in the English language (T. S. Eliot’s essays in a Modernist Transatlantic context), this course will trace the development of different poetical traditions through movements and counter-movements, cultural continuities and discontinuities, exemplified by specific authors and works: from the so-called “Metaphysical poets” or “Protestant poetics” of the Seventeenth Century to the pre-Romantic and Romantic Period, from the anti-Romantic stance of the Modernist decades between the two World Wars to the neo-Romantic, confessional and post-confessional modes of the mid and late Twentieth Century.

• 1.  (A) Eagleton, Terry How to Read a Poem Blackwell, Oxford, 2007

A mandatory set of primary texts (poems and short prose works in English, from Donne and Herbert through Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney) and of secondary texts (related theoretical and critical essays in English and Italian, from the Russian Formalists to the U.S. Cultural critics) will be indicated and provided by the teacher at the beginning of the course.

• § lezione frontale§ gruppi di lavoro

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English