Documento del 15 Maggio - Liceo Classico "G. Leopardi"

Module 3 –The Victorian Age
The Historical and Social Context: The Early Victorian Age; The later years of Queen
Victoria’s Reign
The World Picture: The Victorian Compromise;The Victorian Frame of Mind
The Literary Context: The Victorian Novel;Types of Novels; Aestheticism and Decadence
Compare and contrast: French Realism/Naturalism in the works of Balzac, the De
Goncourt brothers, Flaubert, Zola; the influence of Baudelaire
Charles Dickens: essential biography and main works; The plots of Dickens’s novels;
Characters; A didactic aim; Style and reputation;
o Hard Times: Plot; Structure; A critique of materialism
Excerpt: ‘Coketown’ (ll. 1-46)
Compare and contrast: Benjamin Disraeli, Sybil, or the Two Nations
Excerpt: ‘Mr Trafford’s village’(handout)
Thomas Hardy: essential biography and main works; Hardy’s deterministic view;
Hardy’s Wessex; The difficulty of being alive; Style
o Jude the Obscure: Plot; Jude’s obscurity; Controversial issues; A departure into the
modern novel
Excerpt: ‘Suicide’
Ottimo 22
Robert Louis Stevenson, essential biography and main works; The origins of The
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
o The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde: Plot; The double nature of the setting;
Good and Evil; Narrative Technique; Influences and Interpretations
Excerpt : ‘Jekyll’s experiment’
Oscar Wilde: essential biography and main works; The rebel and the dandy; Art for
Art’s Sake
o The Picture of Dorian Gray: Plot; Narrative Technique; Allegorical Meaning
Excerpts: ‘The Preface’; ‘Basil Hallward’
Compare and contrast: Arthur Rimbaud, ‘Lettre du voyant’, ‘Une saison en enfer’
(incipit) (Italian version commented and contextualised in English - handout)
Module 4 –The Modern Age
The World Picture: The Age of Anxiety
The Literary Context: Modernism; War Poetry; Modernist Poetry; Modernist Novel
Rupert Brooke:
o ‘The soldier’
Wilfred Owen:
o ‘Dulce et Decorum est’
Siegfried Sassoon:
o ‘Suicide in the trenches’
Alfred Edward Housman:
o ‘Here dead we lie’ (handout)
Wilfrid Gibson:
o ‘Breakfast’ (handout)
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Thomas Stearns Eliot: essential biography and main works; The conversion; The impersonality
of the Artist; The Objective Correlative; The Mythical Method
o The Waste Land: The sections; The new concept of history; The mythical method; Innovative and
stylistic devices
Excerpt: ‘The Burial of the Dead’ (full section - handout)
Compare and contrast: Eugenio Montale, from Ossi di seppia: ‘Spesso il male di vivere
ho incontrato’, ‘I Limoni’, ‘Non chiederci la parola’, ‘Forse un mattino andando’
(handout)
Buono
James Joyce: essential biography and main works; Ordinary Dublin; The rebellion
against the Church; A subjective perception of time; The impersonality of the artist; The
Mythical Method; The epiphany
o Ulysses: Plot; The relation to Odyssey; The setting; The representation of human
nature; The mythical method; A revolutionary prose
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