Italian literature
- Overview
- Assessment methods
- Learning objectives
- Contents
- Full programme
- 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.
1. Institutional part. The exam requires knowledge of the general lines of the development of Italian literary history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. More precisely, the historical-critical framework of the main literary movements is required (Romanticism, Scapigliatura, Realism, Decadentism, Futurism, Hermeticism, Neorealism, Neoavanguardie), and knowledge of the cultural and biographical profile of the major authors (Leopardi, Manzoni, Nievo, Verga, Carducci, Pascoli, d'Annunzio, Pirandello, Svevo, Ungaretti, Saba, Montale, Calvino, Sciascia, Pasolini). In order to prepare the exam programme, the assistance provided by a good Anthology of Italian Literature is advised.
2. Moreover, the reading of a significant Nineteenth- or Twentieth-Century-novel is mandatory: De Roberto, I Viceré; Verga, I Malavoglia; Mastro-don Gesualdo; Matilde Serao, Il paese di Cuccagna; Pirandello, L’esclusa; I vecchi e i giovani; Quaderni di Serafino Gubbio operatore; Svevo, Senilità; Una vita; Deledda, Canne al vento; Elias Portolu; Palazzeschi, Il codice di Perelà; Le sorelle Materassi; Aleramo, Una donna; Moravia, Gli indifferenti; La noia; 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; Il superstite; Pratolini, Cronache di poveri amanti; 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; Tomasi di Lampedusa, Il Gattopardo; Calvino, Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno; Il visconte dimezzato; Il barone rampante; Il castello dei destini incrociati; Se una notte d’inverno un viaggiatore; Bedeschi, Centomila gavette di ghiaccio; Rigoni Stern, Il sergente nella neve; Natalia Ginzburg, Lessico famigliare; Renata Viganò, L’Agnese va a morire; Vittorini, Il garofano rosso; Uomini e no; Conversazione in Sicilia; Fenoglio, Il partigiano Johnny; Una questione privata; Bassani, Gli occhiali d’oro; Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini; 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; Anna Banti, Artemisia; Elsa Morante, L’isola di Arturo; La storia; Flaiano, Tempo di uccidere; Martini, Requiem per zia Domenica; Volponi, Memoriale; 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; Paola 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; Tabucchi, Sostiene Pereira; Vassalli, La Chimera; Eco, Il nome della rosa (other proposals can be agreed with the teacher). The ability to critically analyze the text will be assessed, with attention to the narrative construction, the character of the characters, the linguistic choices, and with adequate information on the author's historical and cultural location.
3. Monographic part. Essential notions of metrics and rhetoric. Petrarchism in Italy and Europe, the establishment of the canon and the concept of tradition; paths of modernity between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The course is integrated with the analytical and commented reading of the following texts:
- Dante, Vita nova, cap. XXVI (son. Tanto gentile);
- Cavalcanti, son. Chi è questa che vèn, ch'ogn'uom la mira;
- Dante, Inferno, V: l'episodio di Paolo e Francesca;
- Dante, Inferno, XXVI: il viaggio di Ulisse;
- Petrarca, dalle Familiari, IV, 1: L’a
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.
Ricevimento: in generale, dopo le lezioni. Si prega di inviare la richiesta via mail (ev.maiolini@uninsubria.it).