Italian literature
- Overview
- Assessment methods
- Learning objectives
- Contents
- Bibliography
- Delivery method
- Teaching methods
- Contacts/Info
The prerequisites are the knowledge of Literature History programme of the last three years of secondary 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 test aimed at testing the acquisition, 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 slides (available on the e-learning platform) provide 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 oral test (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 course, the interpretation of texts and the perception 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 main topics delivered during lessons are:
- The concept of tradition: the early days of Italian Literature and Dante.
- Dante: the stilnovo poet, the Comoedia poet.
- Petrarchesque tradition in Italy and in Europe between Fourteenth and Sixteenth Century.
- Italian, the language of poetry; poetry for music until the Eighteenth century (hints).
- The romantic revolution.
- Leopardi and the European Romantic theories.
- Symbolism and the discovery of inner life.
- Fin de siècle: literature and new sciences.
In order to prepare the exam programme, 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 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 64 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 phenomena.
The lecturer will meet students at the end of eanch class, upon email request (gianmarco.gaspari@uninsubria.it).