B1757 - Literature and Science (1) (LM)

Learning outcomes

At the end of the course the student has acquired knowledge about the problem of the “two cultures”, and the long critical debate developed around the relations between the humanities and sciences as two different and competing worldviews, though called to confrontation and constructive dialogue. Through the study of examples drawn from Italian tradition, he has also become aware of the distinctive features of scientific and literary languages; the specific characters of scientific rhetoric and the scientists’ writing style; the models of reception and literary reuse of scientific themes and materials.

Course contents

The Telescope and the Computer. From Baroque Ingegno to AI

The course explores the relationship between literature, science and the techniques of invention across two seasons of the Italian tradition, deliberately set side by side: the seventeenth and the twentieth century. The first part interrogates the Baroque age as a great laboratory of ingegno — the inventive faculty of wit: on the one hand, the encyclopaedic and combinatorial tradition of the clavis universalis, together with the rhetoric of Emanuele Tesauro, whose Cannocchiale aristotelico conceives of metaphor as the product of a veritable categorial machine; on the other, on a different and competing front, Galileo's new science and his prose, in which the book of nature is read in the language of mathematics. The second part is devoted to the cybernetic season of Italian literature: the computer-generated poetry of Nanni Balestrini (Tape Mark I), Italo Calvino's combinatorial poetics between Cibernetica e fantasmi and the short prose of Ti con zero, and the verse-writing machine imagined by Primo Levi in Il Versificatore. The passage from seventeenth-century ingegnoto artificial intelligence provides the theoretical thread of the entire course, inviting us to ask what happens to the categories of authorship, invention and style when the production of texts becomes a procedure, and to what extent today's generative machines fulfil, under another name, the combinatorial dream of the Baroque.

The 30-hour course takes place in the fourth period (second semester).

Non-attending students see the Readings/Bibliography section.

Students with SLD or temporary or permanent disabilities. It is suggested that they get in touch as soon as possible with the relevant University office (https://site.unibo.it/studenti-con-disabilita-e-dsa/en) and with the lecturer in order to seek together the most effective strategies for following the lessons and/or preparing for the examination.

Readings/Bibliography

Readings

Emanuele Tesauro, Il Cannocchiale aristotelico: selected chapters (preface; the sections on ingegno and metaphor; the categorical index). Reference will also be made to U. Eco’s adaptation in L'isola del giorno prima. The passages will be uploaded to Virtuale.

Galileo Galilei: selected passages from The Saggiatore (the ‘fable of sounds’ and the ‘book of nature’), from the Dialoghi and from the Discorsi. The passages will be uploaded to Virtuale.

Nanni Balestrini, Tape Mark I (with the critical apparatus from the Almanacco Letterario Bompiani 1962). Available online: https://binart.eu/tape-mark-1/almanacco_letterario%20bompiani_1962.pdf

Italo Calvino, Ti con zero, Milan, Mondadori (Oscar): full text; Il castello dei destini incrociati, Milano, Mondadori (Oscar): the first part and the Concluding Note.

Primo Levi, Storie naturali, Torino, Einaudi: Il Versificatore and Alcune applicazioni del Mimete.

Bibliography

A. Battistini, Letteratura e scienza, a cura di A. Di Franco, introduzione di G. Baffetti, Bologna, Pàtron, 2024: three essays from the first part and three from the second;

Paolo Rossi, Clavis universalis. Arti della memoria e logica combinatoria da Lullo a Leibniz, Bologna, il Mulino, 2024: the introduction and the chapters on Llull and Leibniz;

Paolo Rossi, I filosofi e le macchine, Milano, Feltrinelli, 2017: Chapter I (Arti meccaniche e filosofia nel secolo XVI) and Chapter III (Filosofia, tecnica e storia delle arti nel Seicento);

Ezio Raimondi, Letteratura barocca. Studi sul Seicento italiano, Florence, Olschki, 1982: the introduction, Dalla metafora alla teoria della letteratura;

Nello Cristianini, La scorciatoia. Come le macchine sono diventate intelligenti senza pensare in modo umano, Bologna, il Mulino, 2023.

One text of your choice from the following:

Umberto Eco, Opera aperta, Milano, La nave di Teseo, 2023;

Omar Calabrese, L’età neobarocca, Rome–Bari, Laterza, 1987;

Francesco Cassata, Fantascienza?, Torino, Einaudi, 2016;

Massimo Bucciantini, Pensare l'universo. Italo Calvino e la scienza, Roma, Donzelli, 2023

Alessandro Giammei, Il contenuto della poesia informale. Nell'archivio dei pre-testi di Nanni Balestrini, ‘il verri’, no. 66, February 2018, pp. 86–98.

Non-attending students are required to supplement the syllabus with Umberto Eco, Opera aperta, Milano, La nave di Teseo, 2023 (which becomes compulsory) and Italo Calvino, Lezioni americane, Milano, Mondadori (Oscar).

Further guidance on the use of the bibliography will be provided during the course.

 

 

 

Teaching methods

Lectures and analyses of literary texts.

Assessment methods

The evaluation of the students' competencies and abilities acquired during the course consists in an oral interview which has the aim of evaluating the critical and methodological ability of the students. The students will be invited to discuss the texts on the course syllabus and will have to demonstrate an appropriate knowledge of the bibliography indicated in the programme.

Those students who are able to demonstrate a wide and systematic understanding of the issues covered during the lessons, are able to use these critically and who master the field-specific language of the discipline will be given a mark of excellence.

Those students who demonstrate a mnemonic knowledge of the subject with a more superficial analytical ability and ability to synthesize, a correct command of the language but not always appropriate, will be given a fair mark.

A superficial knowledge and understanding of the material, a scarce analytical and expressive ability that is not always appropriate will be rewarded with a pass mark or just above a pass mark.

Students who demonstrate gaps in their knowledge of the subject matter, inappropriate language use, lack of familiarity with the literature in the programme bibliography will not be given a pass mark.

Students with SLD or temporary or permanent disabilities. It is necessary to contact the relevant University office (https://site.unibo.it/studenti-con-disabilita-e-dsa/en) with ample time in advance: the office will propose some adjustments, which must in any case be submitted 15 days in advance to the lecturer, who will assess the appropriateness of these in relation to the teaching objectives.

Teaching tools

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Office hours

See the website of Giovanni Baffetti