Italian literature
As this will be a Bachelor’s Degree course, prerequisites are the learning of Literature History achieved during the last three years of high school, alongside with the knowledge of essential elements of linguistic and rhetoric analysis. They are both not binding in preparatory terms. As the course is included among those ones of the first year, it allows references and connection to the History and Art History lectures which take place of the first semester.
The final exam consists of an oral talk, aimed at testing the acquirement, comprehension and re-elaboration of the course contents, on the basis of the synchronic structure consistent with the course organisation.
Textbooks, alongside with other books required by the course program and didactical slides (available on the e-learning website) allow to the verification of the general knowledge of the topic and of expositive and critical-analysis skills.
The final mark is calculated primarily on the basis of the correctness and pertinence of the answers given during the oral exam (70%), with regard to communicative skills and the ability to adequately justify statements, analysis and evaluations during the talk (30%).
The course will provide the historical assessment of the concept of “literary tradition” from Dante to the romantic revolution, alongside with the awareness of general developments of Italian literary history between Nineteenth and Twentieth Century. The course is part of one of the primary settings of the Bachelor’s degree formative itinerary, the interpretation of texts and the perceaving of their sense and value. By intersecting linguistic practices to their historical evolution and the special features of the quality and value concepts, it aims at making more and more explicit such conceptual knots, insisting on direct reading of texts, on their interpretation and on picturing their historical and ideological context. Some of the expected didactic goals are: the activation of adequate critical settings of analysis, alongside with the acquirement of complex methods of text analysis (from rhetoric to linguistic), aiming at observing the development of literary facts with regard to philosophical and artistic coeval phenomena.
- The concept of tradition: the early days of Italian Literature and Dante (ten hours).
- Dante: the stilnovo poet, the Comoedia poet (ten hours).
- Petrarchesque tradition in Italy and in Europe between Fourteenth and Sixteenth Century (nine hours).
- Italian, the language of poetry; poetry for music until the Eighteenth century (hints) (nine hours).
- The romantic revolution (nine hours).
- Leopardi and the European Romantic theories (nine hours).
- Symbolism and the discovery of inner life (eight hours).
- Fin de siècle: literature and new sciences (eight hours).
In order to prepare the exam program, the assistance provided by a good Anthology of Italian Literature is advised. Moreover, the reading of a significant Nineteenth- or Twentieth-Century-novel is mandatory. The novel may be chosen among the following: De Roberto, I Viceré; Verga, I Malavoglia; Mastro-don Gesualdo; Pirandello, L’esclusa; I vecchi e i giovani; Svevo, Senilità; Una vita; Deledda, Canne al vento; Elias Portolu; Palazzeschi, Il codice di Perelà; Le sorelle Materassi; Moravia, Gli indifferenti; La ciociara; Buzzati, Il deserto dei Tartari; Un amore; Lussu, Un anno sull’altopiano; Carlo Levi, Cristo si è fermato ad Eboli; Gadda, L’Adalgisa; Quer pasticciaccio brutto de via Merulana; Cassola, Fausto e Anna; Il taglio del bosco; Pratolini, Metello; Le ragazze di San Frediano; Viani, Parigi; Tozzi, Con gli occhi chiusi; Pavese, La casa in collina; La luna e i falò; Primo Levi, Se questo è un uomo; La tregua; Malaparte, Kaputt; La pelle; Calvino, Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno; Il barone rampante; Il castello dei destini incrociati; Se una notte d’inverno un viaggiatore; Natalia Ginzburg, Lessico famigliare; Tomasi di Lampedusa, Il Gattopardo; Vittorini, Il garofano rosso; Uomini e no; Conversazione in Sicilia; Fenoglio, Il partigiano Johnny; Una questione privata; Brancati, Don Giovanni in Sicilia; Il bell’Antonio; Paolo il caldo; Bianciardi, La vita agra; Aprire il fuoco; Alvaro, Gente in Aspromonte; Lalla Romano, Le parole tra noi leggere; Elsa Morante, La storia; Flaiano, Tempo di uccidere; Martini, Requiem per zia Domenica; Pasolini, Ragazzi di vita; Una vita violenta; Campanile, Il povero Piero; Sciascia, Il giorno della civetta; Il consiglio d’Egitto; L’affaire Moro; Candido, ovvero un sogno fatto in Sicilia; Masino, Monte Ignoso; Morselli, Roma senza papa; Dissipatio H. G.; Santucci, Orfeo in paradiso; Il velocifero; Tobino, Le libere donne di Magliano; Bufalino, Diceria dell’untore; Le menzogne della notte; Berto, Il male oscuro; Chiara, La spartizione; Il pretore di Cuvio; Ortese, L’iguana; Il cardillo addolorato; Consolo, Il sorriso dell’ignoto marinaio (other proposals can be discussed directly with the teacher).
The texts delivered during lessons include texts in j-peg format and slides in PowerPoint format. They will be available on the e-learning website once the series of lectures achieved.
The learning goals of the course will be achieved through frontal lessons (total time 72 hours). Remakable texts will be delivered and discussed with and adequate historical overview. The linguistic and rhetorical perspectives of the texts will assume a particular importance, together with the investigation of the iteration among contemporary literary, artistic and philosophical phenomenon.