Study-Unit Description

Study-Unit Description


CODE ENG5101

 
TITLE Writing the Mediterranean 1

 
UM LEVEL 05 - Postgraduate Modular Diploma or Degree Course

 
MQF LEVEL 7

 
ECTS CREDITS 5

 
DEPARTMENT English

 
DESCRIPTION Writing the Mediterranean 1 focuses on representations of the Mediterranean in literature and culture from the Classical period to Modernity. It traces the importance of the Classics in the development of an English literary tradition and it surveys the various ways in which travel to the region shaped the British literary and cultural imaginary through the ages, from the Elizabethan to the Romantic, Victorian and Modern periods.

The lectures for this study-unit will be integrated into the teaching programme of the Spring School (Re-)Visiting the Mediterranean.

The Spring School will be held at the Valletta Campus (dates to be provided on VLE).

Hybrid attendance will be possible under special circumstances.

Study-Unit Aims:

• To give students an in-depth knowledge of a range of texts from the Mediterranean region, and/or texts that represent the Mediterranean from other perspectives;
• To give students a good grasp of the intertwined histories of the Mediterranean region as represented in different areas of literature;
• To advance the students’ skills of critical and comparative analysis, encouraging them to think in an interdisciplinary manner and draw connections between texts from different linguistic and cultural traditions;
• To promote the close study of texts and elicit reflections on the encounters and exchanges in the literatures of the region, as well as the ideologies that drive these representations;
• To teach students to write textual / critical commentary at postgraduate level.

Learning Outcomes:

1. Knowledge & Understanding
By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to:

• Demonstrate in writing their mastery of a range of texts related to the Mediterranean region, and/or representing the Mediterranean from other perspectives;
• Write persuasively about the differences between periods and/or areas of this literature, and/or of the continuity or discontinuities in the representations of the Mediterranean region;
• Discuss how the texts studied represent and reflect cultural encounters, clashes or exchanges in the literature of the region or of the region’s representations, and what ideologies drive these representations;
• Formulate an argument demonstrating a comprehensive grasp of the ways in which contemporary critical perspectives can be used to reassess and reevaluate this literary tradition.

2. Skills
By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to:

• Identify, describe and evaluate the influences between the texts studied, and how they converge or diverge in their literary construction of (an area of) Mediterranean culture, history, ethnicities, or geography;
• Engage in forms of comparative analyses that cut across traditional disciplinary, linguistic and generic boundaries;
• Produce advanced textual / critical commentary upon selected texts from the literature studied.

Main Text/s and any supplementary readings:

Main Texts:

- Aeschylus, The Oresteia -- trans.Simon Goldhill (London: Cambridge UP, 1992)
- Aristotle, The Art of Rhetoric -- trans.John Henry Freese (London: Heinemann, 1947)
- Plato, Phaedrus -- trans.Tom Griffith (New York: Everyman, 2000)
- Cicero, De Oratore -- trans. E.W. Sutton (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1982)
- Shakespeare, The Tempest, Antony and Cleopatra, Othello -- ed. Stanley Wells, (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986)
- Tobias Smollett, Travels Through France and Italy (1766) -- (London: Tauris Parke Paperbacks, 2010)
- Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy (1768) -- (Hertfordshire: Wordsworth, 1995)
- William Hazlitt, Notes on a Journey Through France and Italy (1826) -- Complete Works,(London: Forgotten Books, 2018)
- The Complete Works of P.B. Shelley -- Neville Rogers (Oxford: Clarendon, 1972)
- The Complete Works of Lord Byron -- ed. Jerome J. McGann (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986)
- Charles Dickens, Pictures from Italy (1846) -- (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1957)
- Henry James, Italian Hours (1909) -- (New York: Library of America, 1993)
- EM Forster, A Room With A View (1908), (London: Penguin Classics, 2006)
- Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905) -- (London: Penguin Classics, 2012)
- Thomas Mann, Death in Venice (1912) -- trans. Lowe-Porter (London: Penguin, 1971)
- James Joyce, Ulysses (1922) -- (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994)
- Albert Camus, The Outsider (1942) -- trans. Sandra Smith, (London :Penguin, 2022).

Supplementary Readings:

- Braudel, Fernand, ‘The Mediterranean: Land, Sea, History’, The UNESCO Courier: Mediterranean Worlds (1985), XXXVIII, 12, 4-12
- Chambers, Iain, Mediterranean Crossings: The Politics of an Interrupted Modernity (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008)
- Holland, Robert, The Warm South: How the Mediterranean Shaped the British Imagination (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018)
- Matvejevic, Predrag, Mediterranean: A Cultural Landscape, trans. by Michael Henry Heim (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999)
- Reading and Writing the Mediterranean: Essays by Vincenzo Consolo, ed. by Norma Bouchard and Massimo Lollini (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006).

 
STUDY-UNIT TYPE Lecture

 
METHOD OF ASSESSMENT
Assessment Component/s Assessment Due Sept. Asst Session Weighting
Assignment SEM2 Yes 100%

 
LECTURER/S Aaron Aquilina
Mario Aquilina
Petra Caruana Dingli
Krista Bonello Rutter Giappone
Stella Borg Barthet
Norbert Bugeja
James David Corby
Maria Frendo
Marija Grech

 

 
The University makes every effort to ensure that the published Courses Plans, Programmes of Study and Study-Unit information are complete and up-to-date at the time of publication. The University reserves the right to make changes in case errors are detected after publication.
The availability of optional units may be subject to timetabling constraints.
Units not attracting a sufficient number of registrations may be withdrawn without notice.
It should be noted that all the information in the description above applies to study-units available during the academic year 2024/5. It may be subject to change in subsequent years.

https://www.um.edu.mt/course/studyunit