02609 - Contemporary Italian Literature (O-Z)

Learning outcomes

The 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 among their tradition and cultural legacies. We will also read together and discuss a corpus of literary works through many examples of comparative analysis and practice on different methods.

Course contents

Main topic:

Time, History, Memory.
Forms of temporality between the 19th and 20th centuries

The course aims to investigate the main figures of temporality in novel (1) and poetry (2) between the 19th and 20th centuries, in connection to the changing of the models of thought in different historical and ideological horizons.

The course will focus on the following figures of temporality:

• Eternal recurrence and variation of the Same: the analogical correspondence between events and situations in Il Piacere and the mythic time of Alcyone by Gabriele D’Annunzio.
• Dynamism and simultaneity: the myth of speed in Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s Manifesti del futurismo.
• Instantaneity and duration: the anomalous “war-diary” of Ungaretti’s Porto Sepolto.
• Emergence of the Past into the present and removal: the “mixed time” in Italo Svevo’s La coscienza di Zeno.
• Irreversibility of time and contingency: Eugenio Montale’s Ossi di seppia and Le occasioni.
• Limit-experience and memory: Primo Levi’s Se questo è un uomo.
• Loss of experience in Italian culture and poetry of the Sixties and Seventies.

Readings/Bibliography

Literary texts

1) Students will fully read the following novels:

• Gabriele d’Annunzio, Il Piacere, a cura di F. Roncoroni, Milano, Mondadori, 2008 (or other annotated edition).
• Italo Svevo, La coscienza di Zeno, a cura di C. Benussi, Milano, Feltrinelli, 2014 (or other annotated edition).
• Primo Levi, Se questo è un uomo, Torino, Einaudi, 2005.

Students will also read some proses (pdf available on the platform "Insegnamenti OnLine") from the book:

• Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Teoria e invenzione futurista, Milano, Mondadori, 1983.

2) The texts of the poems to be prepared for the exam (pdf) will be available on the platform "Insegnamenti OnLine" (except for Ungaretti's poems, avaliable at Biblioteca Ezio Raimondi, via Zamboni 32). Below are listed only the books from which the texts will be chosen.

• Gabriele d’Annunzio, Alcyone, Milano, Oscar Mondadori, 1995.
• Giuseppe Ungaretti, Il Porto Sepolto, a cura di C. Ossola, Venezia, Marsilio, 1990.
• Eugenio Montale, Ossi di seppia, a cura di P. Cataldi e F. d’Amely, Milano, Mondadori, 2016; ID., Le occasioni, a cura di T. De Rogatis, Milano, Mondadori, 2011; ID., La bufera e altro, Milano, Mondadori, 2011.
• Antonio Porta, Tutte le poesie (1956-1989), a cura di N. Lorenzini, Garzanti, Milano, 2009.
• Andrea Zanzotto, Tutte le poesie, a cura di S. Dal Bianco, Milano, Mondadori, 2011.

Recommended reading
(see the platform "Insegnamenti OnLine")

• Stephen Kern, Il tempo e lo spazio. La percezione del mondo tra Otto e Novecento, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1988 (pagine da definire).
• Walter Benjamin, Di alcuni motivi in Baudelaire, in ID., Angelus Novus. Saggi e Frammenti, Torino, Einaudi, 1962 (reprints), pp. 89-144.
  
• G. Guglielmi, Interpretazione di Ungaretti, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1989 (pagine da definire) (*).
• F. Carbognin, Svevo e Saba tra Trieste e la Mitteleuropa, in N. Bonazzi, A. Campana, F. Giunta, N. Maldina [a cura di], Itinerari nella letteratura italiana. Da Dante al web, Roma, Carocci, 2013, Cap. XXIX, pp. 357-363 (*).
• G. Guglielmi, La vita originale di Zeno, in ID., La prosa italiana del Novecento. Umorismo Metafisica Grottesco, Torino, Einaudi, 1986, pp. 30-55 (*).
  
• E. Testa, Montale, Torino, Einaudi Tascabili, 2000, pp. 1-77.
• M. Barenghi, Perché crediamo a Primo Levi? - Why do we believe Primo Levi?, Torino, Einaudi, 2013 (bilingual edition), pp. 3-79.
• F. Carbognin, Linguaggio (1956 – 1969), in N. Lorenzini – S. Colangelo [a cura di], Poesia e Storia, Milano, Bruno Mondadori, 2013, pp. 195-239 (*).
• N. Lorenzini, Postfazione, in A. Porta, Poesie 1956-1988, Milano, Mondadori, 1989, pp. 179-195 (*).

 

Additional Resources will be available on on the platform "Insegnamenti OnLine".

 

Students who are not going to attend our classes are requested to acquire a basic knowledge of 20th Century Italian Literature. Suggest reading: A. Casadei, Storia della letteratura italiana. Vol. 6: Il Novecento, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2014.

Teaching methods

Classes with a strong interaction between students and teacher. 

 

Classes begin on Monday, 3th February, 2020, and go further with the following schedule:

Monday, 11.00 am - 13.00 am
Aula C, via Centotrecento 18.

Tuesday, 11.00 am - 13.00 am
Aula C, via Centotrecento 18.

Wednesday, 11.00 am - 13.00 am
Aula C, via Centotrecento 18.

Assessment methods

The final exam consists of 1) a written test (10 pages paper about one of the topics of the course, previuosly approved by the teacher) and 2) an oral appointment, which aims to verify some methodological, personally developed skills. It lasts approx. 15 minutes. Students must sign up at the AlmaEsami web site (https://almaesami.unibo.it).

A positive or excellent score (27 to 30/30, with possible distinction) corresponds to a full mastering of technical, theoretical, historical and terminological resources of Twentieth Century and Contemporary Italian literature, and to a proved ability to make connections among single aspects of the course contents, and to show awareness of textual features with appropriate language; an average score (23 to 26/30) goes to students who reveal some lacks in one or more topics or analytical proofs, or are able to use just mechanically their ability in interpretation; a pass or low score (18 to 22/30) to students with severe lacks in one or more topics or exercises, or not enough accurate while they use or quote notions and samples. A negative score is to be assigned to students who are not able to recall general notions in a sample of text and/or in general.

Teaching tools

Audio-visual resources.

Office hours

See the website of Francesco Carbognin