85121 - Contemporary Literary Cultures (1) (LM)

Academic Year 2021/2022

Learning outcomes

This 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 prose works through many examples of comparative analysis and practice on different methods.

Course contents

Italian Narratives

The course aims to provide students with the most up-to-date methods of analysis of the literary text. In particular, it will focus on the reception of authors and works that have gained success through international circulation.

The course investigates the relationship among literature, cinema, television and new media as transnational narratives. A transmedia story represents the integration of entertainment experiences across a range of different media platforms. A story might spread from literature into cinema, television, the web, and so forth, picking up new consumers as it goes and allowing the most dedicated fans to drill deeper.

Italian literary and audio-visual products circulate in various markets, spreading – at national and international levels – images and models (stereotypes and/or counter-stereotypes) of “Italianness”.

Readings/Bibliography

Umberto Eco, Il nome della rosa, Bompiani, 2020

Il nome della rosa, regia di Jean-Jacques Annaud, 1986

Il nome della rosa - serie TV, regia di Giacomo Battiato, 2019

Roberto Saviano, Gomorra. Viaggio nell'impero economico e nel sogno di dominio della camorra, Mondadori, 2014

Gomorra, regia di Matteo Garrone, 2008

Gomorra - La serie, stagione 1, 2014

Bruno Pischedda, Eco: guida a Il nome della rosa, Carocci, 2016

Stefano Calabrese (a cura di), Narrare al tempo della globalizzazione, Carocci, 2016 (introduzione e capitoli 4 e 5)

Giuliana Benvenuti, Il brand Gomorra. Dal romanzo alla serie TV, Il Mulino, 2017

The assigned readings are the same for non-attending students. Additional resources for exam preparation will be available on the Virtuale platform, also useful for those who cannot attend the course.

Teaching methods

The lessons are, most of all, lectures held by the teacher. During the lessons, students will be encouraged to participate. Finally, students will be invited for some specific issues and for the presentation of some texts and authors.

Assessment methods

The oral test 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 tests on the course programme. The student must demonstrate an appropriate knowledge of the bibliography in the course 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.

Teaching tools

In addition to lectures, held by the teacher, audiovisual tools will bthe coursee used to support the teaching. Scholars will also be invited to bring a significant contribution to increase the issues upon which the course focuses.

Office hours

See the website of Giuliana Benvenuti