Aims
This course aims to:
• consider Forster’s depiction of the effect of Italy on English travellers
• investigate his treatment of his themes
• explore his narrative method through close textual analysis
Content
Ever since the Grand Tour became an educational rite of passage for young Northern Europeans, the fascination with the history, art and architecture of Italy has brought many travellers to the country, including writers and poets such as Goethe and Byron, whose accounts of their experiences in poetry and prose inspired large numbers of followers. New itineraries, means of transport and accommodation as well as objects of narrative interest were added in the course of the 19th century, but the general movement remained from north to south. Underlying themes are always the opposition between the familiar and the foreign, the ancient and the modern, and the writing moves between fact and fiction, the real and the imagined. In your reading you will find that an important concern is the question of the extent to which such a venture actually manages to change in some lasting way the minds and hearts of those who undertake it.
E M Forster, too, explored these issues in his works, especially A Room with a View (1908). Acutely sensitive to the crass banalities and cross-cultural faux pas of early twentieth-century English middle-class tourists, he centred his comic depiction of travel to southern Europe on the coming-of-age story of a young woman attempting to negotiate class and sexual identity issues abroad as well as at home in England. The resulting love story has made A Room with a View his most popular novel.
Presentation of the course
The course will consist of informal lectures with student participation and class discussion strongly encouraged.
Course sessions
1. Introduction: the literary tradition of the encounter with Italy
2. Forster’s response to previous literary treatments of Italian travel
3. Lucy’s experience of Italy
4. Lucy at home
5. A “novel of ideas”?
Learning outcomes
You are expected to gain from this series of classroom sessions a greater understanding of the subject and of the core issues and arguments central to the course.
The learning outcomes for this course are:
• a critical appreciation of literary and historical contexts
• an informed response to the text and some of the issues covered on the course
• progress towards an analytical approach to reading a literary work
Required reading
*E M Forster, A Room With a View* many paperback and other editions
