00562 - Italian Literature (M-Z)

Learning outcomes

By the end of the course, student will have the tools for textual exegesis (ancient and modern, edited and unpublished) within our secular literary tradition, seen as a cultural heritage and a monument to our national identity.They will know how to judge and use methods of historical analysis applied to documents of Italian literature, keeping a diachronic perspective. They will be able to logically expound and organize complex data and information, so as to formulate independent conclusions and opinions. They will organize information logically and outline it with methodological rigour, care and precision.

Course contents

MODULE A. Italian literature. Reading and commenting texts from Dante to the Nineteenth century.

The first module intends to retrace the fundamental moments of Italian literature through a selection of exemplary pages by the major authors, belonging to different eras and genres, from the Origins to the Nineteenth century, which will be inserted in their historical and literary context. The aim of the course is to provide some university-level reading and commentary models, to allow students to develop a method of analysis of the literary text that is also useful in a didactic perspective; on the other hand, the module A aims to reconstruct, by starting from the texts themselves, the main characteristics of the historical-literary periods examined, in order to insert the study of historical periods in the cultural and literary dimension.

After an introduction to the literary text and an illustration of the "main tools of the scholar of Italian Literature " (i.e. philology, rhetoric, metrics...), texts by the following poets of our literary tradition will be read and commented on: Dante, Petrarca, Boccaccio, Alberti, Ariosto, Machiavelli, Tasso, Foscolo, Leopardi, Manzoni.

 

MODULE B: Princes and letters: a route from Dante to Leopardi

Over the centuries, Italian men of letters have often been accused of conniving or colluding with power or - in many cases - of being completely indifferent to the political sphere. Yet, starting from the founding father of our literature, Dante Alighieri, there were many Italian authors who have openly sided and who have "military" to make their idea of society prevail, and, with it, their idea of "homeland". " (very far from the inferior use prevailing today: it is a chimera completely similar to the "smelling panther" Dante hunts in "De vulgari eloquentia"). The module intends to review the positions taken by some of our major authors (Dante, Petrarca, Machiavelli, Alfieri, Foscolo) towards men of power (from the emperor Henry VII to Napoleon, passing through the descendants of Lorenzo the Magnificent), to see, through some of their less "canonical" texts, what role Italian intellectuals have carved out for themselves in the dynamics of power. The route will end with the reading and commentary of an extraordinarily topical text by Leopardi, namely the "Discourse on the present state of Italian customs".

Readings/Bibliography

Module A

1. G. Alfano, P. Italia, E. Russo, F. Tomasi, Profilo di letteratura italiana. Dalle origini a fine Ottocento, Milano, Mondadori, 2021 (pp. 1-24; 42-56; 142-158; 410-425; 647-703 can be skipped);
2. L. Chines, C. Varotti, Che cos'è un testo letterario?, Roma, Carocci, 2015.

 

Module B

Students will have to study 3 of the following 6 texts that will be addressed in the classroom by the teacher (choosing a text between 1 and 2; a text between 3 and 4; a text between 5 and 6):

1. Dante Alighieri, Epistola VII, in Dante Alighieri, Opere, a cura di M. Santagata, vol. II, Milano, Mondadori, 2014
2. Francesco Petrarca, Familiare XII, 2; Senile XIV, 1, in Francesco Petrarca, Canzoniere, Trionfi, Familiarum Rerum Libri, Firenze, Sansoni, 1975; Idem, Res seniles. Libri 13-17, a cura di S. Rizzo, con la collaborazione di M. Berté, Firenze, Le Lettere, 2017
3. Niccolò Machiavelli, Il principe, edizione del cinquecentennale con traduzione a fronte in italiano moderno di Carmine Donzelli; introduzione e commento di Gabriele Pedullà, Roma, Donzelli, 2013
4. Vittorio Alfieri, Della tirannide, Del principe e delle lettere; introduzione e nota bibliografica di Marco Cerruti; note di Ezio Falcomer, 2a ed., Milano, Bur, 2000;
5. Ugo Foscolo, Ode a Napoleone Bonaparte liberatore; Discorso su la Italia e Orazione a Bonaparte pel Congresso di Lione, in Scritti letterari e politici dal 1796 al 1808, a cura di G. Gambarin, Firenze, Le Monnier, 1972, pp. 157-162; 225-234 (capp. VII-X).
6. Giacomo Leopardi, Discorso sopra lo stato presente de' costumi degli italiani, Venezia, Marsilio, 1998.

It is mandatory to deepen two of these texts (four for non-attending students), or specified parts thereof:

1. Alessandro Barbero, Dante, Bari, Laterza, 2020, capp. 12-21 (in part. le pp. 152-241);
2. Lorenzo Geri, Petrarca cortigiano. Francesco Petrarca e la corti da Avignone a Praga, Roma, Bulzoni, 2020, pp. 165-226;
3. Gian Mario Anselmi, Leggere Machiavelli, Bologna, Pàtron, 2014;
4. Marco Cerruti, Introduzione a V. Alfieri, La tirannide, Del principe e delle lettere ; La virtu sconosciuta, Milano, Bur, 2000;
5. G. Nicoletti,Foscolo, Roma, Bulzoni, 2006, cap. IV (pp. 63-99);
6. E. Raimondi, Letteratura e identità nazionale, Milano, B. Mondadori, 1998, pp. 30-66

Teaching methods

Frontal lesson and use of power points that will be made available on the IOL platform.

Assessment methods

MODULE A

The exam of MODULE A consists of a written test on EOL platform, a test of 20 closed single-answer questions (max 20 points) and a paraphrase with a brief analysis of a literary text (max 12 points) among those texts included in the file "Testi_Parafrasi_commenti" uploaded on "Virtuale". The proof will last 2 hours. During the course, specific training will be carried out on the exam and a facsimile of the test will be made available in the course materials on the IOL platform.

MODULE B

The knowledge of MODULE B will be verified instead through an oral interview lasting about 20 minutes (max 30 points). The final evaluation will be given by the average of the two tests.

It is strongly recommended to take module A first (written exam on the PC: 6 sessions per year) and then module B (oral exam: 9 sessions per year).

 

The Criteria of Evaluation

The oral exam consists of a discussion (approx. 20 minutes) about the monographic section about Princes and Letters. Students are required to show the ability to discuss and interpret the assigned texts clearly and persuasively, relating them to their cultural context. Also the student's ability to express himself with clarity and language properties will be evaluated. The standard of oral expression will also be assessed.

• The lack of ability to orientate itself in the literary panorama of Italian culture and to recognize the fundamental characteristics of the major texts of the late 15th and 16th centuries of the program will entail negative voting;
• The student who will grasp the fundamental aspects of the works and authors proposed during the course and will recognize the fundamental questions and the salient features of the most important literary works proposed by professor and its protagonists will achieve a positive evaluation (vote: 26-28);
• An in-depth knowledge of the literary texts will imply a very good (29-30) and even excellent (30L) evaluation. To achieve excellence evaluation a complete understanding of all the topics covered is required, and also the firm possession of the literary chronology (the dates of the major works' output of the authors treated are important), the use of precise technical terminology (in the rhetorical and philological-literary domain, etc). For istance, it is very important that the student is able to say the precise literary genre to which the examined works belong, or to indicate the chronological range of composition in the case of very famous works, and, moreover, a personal critical elaboration of the acquired contents.

Teaching tools

Projection of texts and images, sharing of teaching materials on the platform

Office hours

See the website of Andrea Severi