Ideas and Narratives of the Nation: from Shakespeare to Brexit
The course, taught in English, focuses on the study of authors, works and movements - from the Renaissance to the contemporary period - dealing with the question of national identity, taking into account recent political-cultural phenomena such as Brexit. It aims to bring students to examine the emergence, within the field of literary representation, of the different national identities in the British Isles from the early modern period onwards, as well as the development of a shared but problematic Britishness from the eighteenth century onwards. At the same time, the course will consider, through the analysis of texts from different eras (from Shakespeare to Ali Smith), how Britain’s imperial expansion has influenced the formation of these identities. These examinations are complemented by the study of specific literary and cultural movements and periods in the evolution of English-language literature in the British Isles of the Twentieth Century. In the lectures, historical and aesthetic contextualization regularly accompanies the analysis of texts (in the form of excerpts and in the original language) from a structural, stylistic and thematic-ideological point of view. Students are also expected to read and study novels and plays to be chosen among those listed in the exam syllabus, drawn up by the tutor at the beginning of the course and made available online (this Elly page).