Italian literature
As this will be a Bachelor’s Degree course, the only prerequisites are limited to the History and Art History lectures performed in the first semester. More generally, 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, will be enough.
Learning objectives and expected didactic results
The course is part of one of the primary settings of the Bachelor’s degree formative itinerary. 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.
Final assessment
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 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.
Course bibliography
The final exam will require 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.
More specifically, historical-critical assessment of the main literary movements will be required (Romanticism, Scapigliatura, Realism, Decadentism, Futurism, Hermeticism, Neo-realism, etc.) as well as the synthetic awareness of cultural and biographic profiles of major authors. Strongly recommended is the direct reading of some of their most representative works.
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: VERGA, I Malavoglia; Mastro-don Gesualdo; PIRANDELLO, Il fu Mattia Pascal; 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; LUSSU: Un anno sull’altopiano; C. LEVI: Cristo si è fermato a Eboli; GADDA: La cognizione del dolor; 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; P. LEVI: Se questo è un uomo; La chiave a stella; MALAPARTE: Kaputt; La pelle; CALVINO: Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno; Il barone rampante; Se una notte d’inverno un viaggiatore; TOMASI DI LAMPEDUSA: Il Gattopardo; VITTORINI: Il garofano rosso; Uomini e no; Conversazione in Sicilia; BRANCATI: Don Giovanni in Sicilia; BIANCIARDI: La vita agra; ALVARO: Gente in Aspromonte; FLAIANO: Tempo di uccidere; PASOLINI: Ragazzi di vita; SCIASCIA: Il giorno della civetta; Il consiglio d’Egitto; L’affaire Moro; MORSELLI: Roma senza papa; Dissipatio H.G.; SANTUCCI: Orfeo in paradiso; Il velocifero; BUFALINO: Diceria dell’untore.
The course slides (PowerPoint format) will be available on the e-learning website once the series of lectures achieved.