Course aims:

The main objective of this course is to open towards different possibilities of approaching cultural identity and literary discourse in space and time.
Each epoch has its own values reflected in literature.
Understanding the literary discourse of an epoch clears up the understanding of contemporaneity.

Course Entry Requirements:

There is no compulsory work placement in the course unit.

Course contents:

The course and the seminars are centered on two levels. The first level supposes the study of several literary texts coming from the English literature: the Elizabethan Age (Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream), the Augustan Literature (Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and A Tale of a Tub), the Victorian Literature (Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde), short narratives the 20th century. The second part is dedicated to tales/stories and their impact on the reality of different epochs; they can also be seen as a proof of common traits of humanity. Stories from different parts of the world will be analysed: England, France, America, Canada, Asia, Australia.

Teaching methods:

Instruction is a combination of lectures, seminars, groupwork and individual work.

Learning outcomes:

• creating a unitary and coherent structure of the main moments in the synchronic and diachronic evolution of literature and culture focusing especially on the English space in the first part, then passing on to a global view; • detailed analysis of a fairy tale through consulting a specialized bibliography respecting the rules of scientifc writing and with the recognition of the main characteristics of a certain epoch; • evaluation, comparison and selection of the texts starting from explicit criteria of value.

Learning outcomes verification and assessment criteria:

• Combined oral and written examination (50% + 50% of the final grade)

Recommended reading:

Porter Abbott, H., The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative. Cambridge University Press. Chapter 2: Defining narrative, p. 13-27, http:// community.wvu.edu/~bdb026/306/ch2-defining-narrative.pdf, Cambridge University Press, -, 2002, p. 13-27.
Friedman, Jonathan, Cultural Identity and Global Process. Sage. On line partially - Identity and Social Change (isc) http://www.identity-and-social-change.eu/pdf/praesentation_cultura_identity_polen.pdf, -, -, 1994, -.
Miall, D. S., Literary Discourse”. In Handbook of Discourse Processes. Art Graesser, Morton Ann Gernsbacher, & Susan R. Goldman, Eds. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates., -, -, 2002, -.
Propp, Vladimir, Morphology of the Folk Tale. The American Folklore Society and Indiana University. Retrieved from https://archive.org/stream/MorphologyOfTheFolkTale/propp_djvu.txt, -, -, 1968, -.
Skulj, Jola, Comparative Literature and Cultural Identity, Vol. 2, Issue 4, Article 5, Purdue University Press. Retrieved from http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1088&context=clcweb, -, -, 2000, -.