74860 - Contemporary Italian Literature and Writing Lab for Fashion

Academic Year 2018/2019

  • Teaching Mode: Traditional lectures
  • Campus: Rimini
  • Corso: First cycle degree programme (L) in Fashion Cultures and Techniques (cod. 8772)

Learning outcomes


Course contents

"Fashion, city, and characters of modernity". The course aims to analyze the interweaving of literature and fashion in the imagination of modernity through central themes such as city, body, clothes, beauty, seduction, artificial. Special attention will be given to the evolution of dandy and femme fatale, who become protagonists of Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries novels set in the big cities: Paris, London, Rome, New York. These characters will be read as mirror of the radical changes of sensibility and perception of the world announced by Baudelaire and interpreted by d'Annunzio, Pirandello, Scott Fitzgerald, Truman Capote, but also female writers often forgotten, for example Matilde Serao, Amalia Guglielminetti, Gabrielle Colette, Irene Brin. In particular the theme of the city will be examined between fashion and literature, but also art, philosophy, science, cinema, sociology, anthropology from Belle Epoque to fluid, fragmented and virtual modernity. 

In "Laboratory of fashion writings", specifically devoted to professional writings, text composition techniques will be discussed through the analysis of the distinctive features of several different types of texts related to the theme of fashion, with writing  exercises aimed at processing logically and conceptually well-structured texts.

Period of the lectures: second semester, from the beginning of Februar 2018 on.

Venue of lectures: Classroom Briolini 1+2, Corso d'Augusto 237, Rimini.

Schedule: Tuesday 11-13 and 13-15; Thursday 9-11.

 

Readings/Bibliography

- C. Baudelaire, Il pittore della vita moderna: I. Il bello, la moda, la felicità; III. L'artista uomo di mondo, uomo delle folle e fanciullo; IV. La modernità; IX. Il dandy; X. La donna; XI. Elogio del trucco; XII. Le donne e le mondane.

- G. d'Annunzio, Il piacere

- A novel to choose from: E. Zola, Al paradiso delle signore; E. Zola, La preda; L. Pirandello, Quaderni di Serafino Gubbio operatore; A. Moravia, Gli indifferenti; G. Colette, Chéri; F. Scott Fitzgerald, Il grande Gatsby; Truman Capote, Colazione da Tiffany.   

- Moda, metropoli e modernità, edited by D. Baroncini, Milano, Mimesis (available from March 2019)

- D. Baroncini, La moda nella letteratura contemporanea, Milano, Bruno Mondadori, 2010

- Course handouts (paper copies available starting February 2019 at the Copisteria Tecnica in Rimini).

Teaching methods

Frontal lectures.

Attendance is not mandatory, but strongly recommended to improve learning and the study method.

Assessment methods

Oral exam.

During the oral exam the student must prove: 

- excellent knowledge of all the mandatory readings as listed in the program

- critical consideration and interpretation of the relevant topics and texts

- ability to contextualize the authors and their works set in the literary  and cultural backdrop of modernity, from the second half of Nineteenth century to the present day.

In order to obtain an excellent evaluations, it is necessary to demonstrate an excellent knowledge of contents and topics; a sure ability to interpret the texts; critical and personal analysis of the themes; appropriate and effective presentation.

Office hours

See the website of Daniela Baroncini