The course will deal with general aspects of the nineteenth century with specific reference to the transition from eighteenth-century rural society to middle-class industrial society. Students will be given a comprehensive account of the socio-cultural, pedagogical, philosophical and literary context of the nineteenth century with a particular emphasis on female education and female emancipation together with the new role played by women in antithesis to the orthodoxy of the dominant class. Another aspect dealt with will concern the comparison between dystopian and utopian vision in the works of two of the most important writers of the twentieth century; D.H. Lawrence and Aldous Huxley in which their opposing attitudes to the science and rationality of the Western world led to the same fundamental metaphysical and mystical search which in Huxley's case becomes an openness towards the philosophical and spiritual culture of the East.

The course will present the basic sociocultural, scientific, artistic and philosophical ideas that characterised the period of transition from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the second half of the twentieth century. Besides introducing the theoretical debate on the epistemological transformations of the period, the course will devote particular attention to the representation of female experience including the Edwardian period (from Jane Austen to Arnold Bennett). The underlying aim is to examine the ways in which social changes initiated a new artistic sensibility that entailed a rethinking of cultural attitudes and behaviour.