28997 - Italian Twentieth-Century Poetry (LM)

Learning outcomes

At the end of this class, students 1. achieve theoretical skills to connect Italian Twentieth-Century poetry to the overall European history of thought and ideas; 2. get their ability to use a methodology of analysis throughout modern and contemporary poetry, with the help of their acquired literacy in rhetoric, stylistics, linguistics and a general attitude to intertextual and interdisciplinary comparisons.

Course contents

Main topic: Origins. Poetry, verticality, and perception.

This course lasts 60 hours, and amounts to 12 credits. For graduate students in Visual Arts and Classical Philology, as well as for other students interested in taking this class for 6 credits the final examination will consist on the presentation and oral discussion of a short paper (25-30000 bytes) composed upon a specific topic related to those treated throughout the course. This topic, together with its related bibliographical references, should be established according to teacher's advices.

This course is aimed at the study of some works of Italian poetry of the second half of the 20th century, trying to point out the idea of origin, particularly in its feelings of unredeemable distance, and loss; a distance, and a loss, that might be visible in time, in the flowing process of generations, but could be rather expressed by formal choices, by different ways of shaping texts, and by its friction and disagreement face of its own time.

This course assumes a minimum of knowledge upon Twentieth-Century Italian literature, acquired throughout a BA curriculum.

Lectures start on Monday, January 29th, 2018, and go further with the following schedule:

Monday, 5-7 pm, Aula V, Via Zamboni 38;

Tuesday, 5-7 pm, Aula V, Via Zamboni 38;

Thursday, 5-7 pm, Tibiletti Room, Via Zamboni 38.

Readings/Bibliography

Throughout the course, a set of poems will be selected and discussed, including these sources:

- Emilio Villa [1914-2003], Oramai [1947], and Diciassette variazioni su temi proposti per una pura ideologia fonetica [1955];

- Eugenio Montale [1896-1981], La bufera e altro [1956], and Satura [1971];

- Edoardo Sanguineti [1930-2010], Laborintus [1956], and Postkarten [1979];

- Giorgio Caproni [1912-1990], Il seme del piangere [1959], and Il muro della terra [1975];

- Mario Luzi [1914-2005], Su fondamenti invisibili [1971], and Per il battesimo dei nostri frammenti [1985]; these resources are not mandatory;

- Franco Fortini [1917-1994], Paesaggio con serpente [1984], and Composita solvantur [posth. 1994]; these resources are not mandatory.

The following texts will be considered as bibliographical sources:

Cecilia Bello Minciacchi, Per Emilio Villa. Un jet tout grand de courage [pp. 9-36], and Aldo Tagliaferri, Strategia temporale e tattiche lessicali [755-770], both in Emilio Villa, L'opera poetica, Roma: L'Orma Editore, 2014;

- Enrico Testa, Montale, Florence: Le Monnier-Mondadori Education, 2016;

- Erminio Risso, Laborintus di Edoardo Sanguineti. Testo e commento, San Cesario di Lecce: Manni, 2006;

- Alessandro Baldacci, Giorgio Caproni. L'inquietudine in versi, Florence: Cesati, 2016;

- Stefano Verdino, La poesia di Mario Luzi. Studi e materiali (1981-2005), Padua: Esedra, 2006; these resources are not mandatory;

- Luca Lenzini, Un'antica promessa. Studi su Fortini, Macerata: Quodlibet, 2013; these resources are not mandatory.

Further explanations on these and other resources will be provided throughout the course. Copies will be partially made available to students on time with a view to the exam; any other information will be available on a dedicated mailing list.

 

Teaching methods

Traditional lectures with a strong interaction between students and teacher.

Assessment methods

For the 6 credits option see above, "Course contents".

For 12 credits, the final exam consists of an oral appointment, which aims to verify some methodological, personally developed skills. It focuses on the main theoretical matters approached throughout the class, and verifies the knowledge of the poems and essays that have been the subject of a common consideration throughout the class. Students could be invited to read and comment some single poems or samples using an original approach from a critically well-based point of view.

A positive or excellent score (27 to 30/30, even with distinction) corresponds to a full mastering of technical, theoretical, historical and typological sources, to the ability to make connections among single parts of the course contents, and to show awareness of textual features with an appropriate language; an average score (23 to 26/30) goes to students who keep showing some lacks in one or more topics or analytical proofs, or are able to use no more than mechanically their ability of interpretation of a sample of poem or an excerpt from a song; a pass or low score (18 to 22/30) to students who show severe lacks in one or more topics or exercises, or result to be not enough accurate while they are using notions and approaching samples. A negative score is assigned to students who are absolutely not able to use the general notions of interpretation, in a single text sample as well as in general.

Please sign up at the AlmaEsami web site (https://almaesami.unibo.it). The registration time ends two days before the oral examination.

Teaching tools

Excerpts from texts and criticism in digital scans.

Office hours

See the website of Stefano Colangelo