OVERVIEW OF 20TH CENTURY ITALIAN LITERATURE
- Overview
- Assessment methods
- Learning objectives
- Contents
- Full programme
- Teaching methods
- Contacts/Info
A prerequisite for the course is a good ability to analyze the text and knowledge of the general lines of the development of Italian literary history of the twentieth century, with the historical-critical framework of its main literary movements and the cultural and biographical profile of the major authors. The placement of the course in the second year therefore allows the reference to the acquisitions of the Italian Literature course of the first year.
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%).
With the aim of drawing some lines in the Italian literature of the XXth century, the course provides a panorama of the forms through which the relationship (stimulating, critical, contrastive...) of writers with society, between printed paper and public space, has been expressed. The intent is to involve students in an indepth reflection on the use of the linguistic tool in theater, in poetry, in long and short fiction and in translation, stimulating their ability to perceive the value of a text and its cultural significance. The teaching therefore pertains to an essential area of the educational path of communication sciences, focusing on the complex phenomenon of the text, between literary typologies and different ideological frameworks.
The main topics covered in the course are:
• The social use of culture: gestures and texts by Gabriele d’Annunzio.
• The roads of poetry between the two wars: writing and publishing verses in the years of repression.
• The practice of translation: John Donne and William Shakespeare in Italian literary modernity.
• The short story and reality / unreality: female writers of the full XXth century
• The novel in the time of neorealism: Beppe Fenoglio narrator of destiny
• The solitude of the intellectual: Guido Morselli's narrative paradoxes
I. The course provides a panorama of the forms through which the relationship (stimulating, critical, contrastive...) of writers with society, between printed paper and public space, has been expressed. The intent is to involve students in an indepth reflection on the use of the linguistic tool in theater, in poetry, in long and short fiction and in translation, stimulating their ability to perceive the value of a text and its cultural significance. In particular, the following texts will be read and analyzed in detail in class:
- D’Annunzio, da Francesca da Rimini, atto V, scena IV;
- Montale, da Ossi di seppia: In limine e Arsenio;
- Saba, da Trieste e una donna: Il bel pensiero; da Preludio e fughe: Primo congedo;
- Shakespeare, son. XXXIII Full many a glorious morning have I seen (Più di un glorioso mattino ho visto);
- Montale, da Quaderno di traduzioni: Spesso, a lusingar vette, vidi splendere;
- Ungaretti, da Quaranta sonetti: Ho veduto più d’un mattino in gloria;
- Donne, da Songs and Sonnets: A Valediction: forbidding mourning e tr. di Campo, Congedo, a vietarle il lamento;
- Negri, da Le solitarie: Il posto dei vecchi;
- Ortese, da Il mare non bagna Napoli: Un paio di occhiali;
- Guimarães Rosa, da Miguilim;
- Fenoglio, da Il partigiano Johnny;
- Morselli, da Dissipatio H. G.
II. For the preparation of the cultural and biographical profile of the authors treated (Gabriele d’Annunzio, Ada Negri, Eugenio Montale, Umberto Saba, Giuseppe Ungaretti, Anna Maria Ortese, Beppe Fenoglio and Guido Morselli), the manuals of Ferroni or Langella are recommended (Giulio Ferroni, Letteratura italiana contemporanea, 2 voll., Milano, Mondadori, 2007, and reprints; Giuseppe Langella, La modernità letteraria. Manuale di letteratura italiana moderna e contemporanea, Milano-Torino, Pearson, 2021); for female profiles, see the entries in the Enciclopedia delle donne (http://www.enciclopediadelledonne.it/).
III. It is also necessary to prepare the full reading of a work chosen from among those of the authors treated: d’Annunzio, Francesca da Rimini; Il piacere; Negri, Le solitarie; Montale, Farfalla di Dinard; Fuori di casa; Saba, Ernesto; Ortese, Il mare non bagna Napoli; Morselli, Dissipatio H. G.; Fenoglio, I ventritré giorni della città di Alba; Una questione privata; Il partigiano Johnny. The ability to critically analyze the text will be evaluated, with attention to the narrative construction, the character of the characters and the linguistic choices. In addition, the reading of one of the proposals included in section 1 (a-f) of the material for non-attending students is suggested.
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For non-attending students, the point I of the program (the presentation of texts and authors) will be replaced by the reading of one of these proposals:
a) Elena Maiolini, L’ultima variante di Francesca da Rimini, «Archivo d’Annunzio», 8, 2021, pp. 35-50 (open access: https://edizionicafoscari.unive.it/media/pdf/article/archivio-dannunzio/...);
b) Elena Maiolini, L’ombra di Mosè in Saba, Montale e Ungaretti, in Pietro Gibellini, La Bibbia del Belli come provocazione ermeneutica. Lezioni Sapegno 2020, Torino, Nino Aragno, 2021, pp. 65-114 (open access: https://www.academia.edu/62819022/Elena_Valentina_Maiolini_L_ombra_di_Mo...);
c) chapt. V (Le novelle) of Elisa Gambaro, Il protagonismo femminile nell’opera di Ada Negri, Milano, LED, 2010, p. 153 ss.;
d) Arianna Ceschin, “Sento che occorre un mutamento nel paesaggio”: viaggio nel giornalismo degli anni cinquanta di Anna Maria Ortese, «DEP», 39, 2019, pp. 4-14 (open access: https://www.unive.it/pag/fileadmin/user_upload/dipartimenti/DSLCC/docume...);
e) a chap. of Gabriele Pedullà, La strad
The learning goals of the course will be achieved through frontal lessons (total time 56 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.
Upon email request (ev.maiolini@uninsubria.it), at the end of the classes.