02609 - Contemporary Italian Literature (A-L)

Learning outcomes

This course intends to provide a critical and cultural awareness in contemporary Italian literature and civilization. For this purpose, literary texts are always analyzed as open shapes, focusing on the relationships between their tradition and cultural legacies. We will also read together and discuss a corpus of prose works through many examples of comparative analysis and practice on different methods.

Course contents

Subject of study: From the City To the Non-Place in Twentieth Century Fiction and Poetry.

We will treat and collectively analyse relationships between literature and the description of the urban space.

In the Unit I (30 hours) some antithetical narrative contexts will be compared: the description of the symbolist city of Rome in the Gabriele d'Annunzio's Il Piacere, and the polyphonic morphology of the same city in Carlo Emilio Gadda's Pasticciaccio, with a supplement towards the notion of non-place, represented by the Pier Vittorio Tondelli's Rimini.

In the Unit II the poetic production of three relevant authors of the second half of the Twentieth Century will be read and discussed: Giovanni Raboni, especially for his relation with his homeplace, the city of Milan; Giorgio Caproni, in his walk of life and ripening of subjectivity among the city of Leghorn, Genoa, Paris and the allegorical places described in the last poems; Edoardo Sanguineti, with his traveller-poet character in the transition points to the globalized society.

The Unit I, corresponding to 6 credits, will take place from February 3th to March 19th, 2010. The Unit II, with the same credit value, from March 24th to mid-May, 2010, led by Dr. Stefano Colangelo.

Students can take either part for 6 units or both for 12. Directions for foreign students (Socrates/Erasmus and Overseas programs) about recommended readings and required proofs are available below.

Readings/Bibliography

Unit I

Texts:

Gabriele d'Annunzio, Il Piacere, ed. by F. Roncoroni, Milan: Oscar Mondadori, several reprints;

Carlo Emilio Gadda, Quer pasticciaccio brutto de via Merulana (chapters I, II, III, VIII), Milan: Garzanti, several reprints;

Pier Vittorio Tondelli, Rimini, Milan: Bompiani, several reprints.

Secondary Bibliography:

N. Lorenzini, Le città dell'imaginifico d'Annunzio (available on photographic copy);

G. Macchia, Lirica e mondana Roma del "Piacere", in Il Piacere. Atti del XII Convegno, Pescara: Centro Nazionale di Studi Dannunziani, 1989, 7-13;

E. Paratore, Le visioni di Roma nel "Piacere", ibid., 111-124; not required from foreign students;

M.A. Bazzocchi, Personaggio e romanzo nel Novecento italiano, Milan: Bruno Mondadori, 2009 (the chapter Quer pasticciaccio brutto de via Merulana: il personaggio e la forma complessa del mondo);

G. Guglielmi, Lingua e metalinguaggio di Gadda, in Letteratura come sistema e come funzione, Turin: Einaudi, 1967; not required from foreign students;

G. Jacoli, Atlante delle derive, Reggio Emilia: Diabasis, 2002 (chapters III, IV);

N. Lorenzini, Una sincopata apocalisse. "Rimini" di Pier Vittorio Tondelli, in Atlante dei movimenti culturali dell'Emilia-Romagna 1968-2007, ed. by P. Pieri, L. Weber, Bologna: Clueb, 2007, 121-126.

Students will be provided with photocopied excerpts from the readings at due time; a mailing list will be activated for any further information.

Unit II

Texts:

Giovanni Raboni, Le case della Vetra, Cadenza d'inganno and Nel grave sogno, in Tutte le poesie (1951-1998), Milan: Garzanti, 2000;

Giorgio Caproni, Il passaggio d'Enea, Il seme del piangere and Il conte di Kevenhueller, in Tutte le poesie, Milan: Garzanti, 1999;

Edoardo Sanguineti, texts from Postkarten, Corollario and Cose, in Mikrokosmos, Milan: Feltrinelli, 2004.

Secondary Bibliography:

S. Colangelo, Il soggetto nella poesia del Novecento italiano, Milan: Bruno Mondadori, 2009 (Introduzione and chapters 4, 6, 9);

Antologia critica, in G. Raboni, Tutte le poesie (1951-1998), Milan: Garzanti, 2000;

L. Surdich, Giorgio Caproni. Un ritratto, Genoa: Costa & Nolan, 1990;

N. Lorenzini, Realtà e stilizzazione: le Cose di Sanguineti, "L'immaginazione", 168, 2000, 23-25; 

N. Lorenzini, Itinerari sanguinetiani, in Sei poeti liguri, ed. by R. Bertoni, Dublin-Turin: Trinity College-Trauben, 2004, 113-122;

N. Lorenzini, La poesia: tecniche di ascolto, San Cesario di Lecce: Manni, 2003, (the appendix Nuove configurazioni del paesaggio testuale, 245-266); not required from foreign students.

Students will be provided with photocopied excerpts from the readings at due time; a mailing list will be activated for any further information.

Teaching methods

Lectures, scheduled as follows:

Wednesday, 11 am-1 pm – Room III, Via Zamboni 38;

Thursday, 9-11 am – Room V, Via Zamboni 38;

Friday, 9-11 am – Room V, Via Zamboni 38.

Assessment methods

A short written essay (7-8 pages, in Italian) and an oral examination are required from foreign students. The topic of the essay will be selected in advance with the teacher's agreement, upon a subject related to the topics approached through the course. The essay should be presented at least 10 days before the oral exam.

Inscriptions to oral exam on the following website: https://almaesami.unibo.it, until two days before the examination.

Teaching tools

The course includes a series of seminars, whose calendar will be defined at the beginning of the semester.

Office hours

See the website of Niva Lorenzini

See the website of Stefano Colangelo