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Introductory Course
Romantic, Victorian and 20th century English Literature

This year we are going on to study English Literature. Thus the Romantic
Literature, Victorian Literature and the first half of the 20th century will be our
immediate concern. How are we going to do this? Well, it will be a theoretical
part in which the students are informed about the topics discussed and it will be
a practical part in which we are going to study short texts and then see how to
examine them, what to extract of them.

Objectives:
The student will be able to:
- identify the literary periods and writers of that period;
- define and recognize the features of the literary periods;
- make use of terms specific to the literary endeavour;
- make use of devices and techniques utilized in literature;
- read, interpret and analyze a literary text.
The periods we are going to study are: The Romantic Period, comprised
between 1780-1830, with an Introduction designed to examine the historical
premises of the period, The Poets: the Older Generation; within it we are
studying William Blake, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge;
The Scottish Poets, Robert Burns and Walter Scott; The Poets: the Younger
Generation, with the most representative ones, George Gordon Byron, Percy
Bysshe Shelley, John Keats; Drama and its Critics, where we are going to
explore Thomas de Quincey and William Hazlitt, two critics produced by the
Romantic period, despite the fact that it did not produce significant drama. Also
within the Romantic Period we are going to deal with The Novel, having Mary
Shelley, Jane Austen and Walter Scott.
The next literary period we are going to study is Victorian Literature,
1830-1900. Within this period we are going to explore the lives and works of
Charles Dickens, the Brontë Sisters, George Eliot, William Makepeace
Thackeray and others in order to distinguish the features of this period.
We will follow with Modernism and observe the writers’ attempts to
revive a new literature by utilizing new literary means and techniques and forget
about tradition in literature and in art generally speaking, but also in the day-to-
day life.
The last period we are dealing with is Mid-Twentieth Century Literature,
characterized through deep changes both in the style of writing and the idea
upon world.
What the teacher requires from the students is:
- presence in the courses, 50%;

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 - active presence in the seminars, at least 50%;
- there will be homework and a bibliography for the students to comply
with.

Bibliography:
1. Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
2. Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
3. Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
4. Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice; Persuasion; Sense and sensibility
(one of them)
5. Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
6. Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
7. Henry James, Washington Square
8. Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles
9. Arnold Bennett, Anna of the Five Towns
10.Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
11.www.//projectgutenberg.com