02609 - Contemporary Italian Literature (O-Z)

Academic Year 2022/2023

  • Teaching Mode: Traditional lectures
  • Campus: Bologna
  • Corso: First cycle degree programme (L) in Drama, Art and Music Studies (cod. 5821)

    Also valid for First cycle degree programme (L) in Drama, Art and Music Studies (cod. 0956)

Learning outcomes

By the end of the course the student: has a non-abstract and non-manualistic awareness of the main lines of development of Italian literary culture from National Unity to the present day; knows how to apply appropriate methods of analysis to the literary text in prose and verse, distinguishing its relations with different linguistic, artistic and cultural traditions; is able to read the literary text as an open form, in dialogue with the ideological and social horizon of his time, against the background of the wider European context.

Course contents

Main topic:

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.
  • Memory and disenchantment in La Signorina Felicita.
  •  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.

 

Lessons will be held in in-person mode.

 

It is strongly recommended to attend the first introductory lesson about the bibliography of the course and the assessment methods (explained in detail at the bottom of the page). Students are also invited to access the Teaching resources on Virtuale platform before the start of the course.



Further information about the course, program and assessment methods will be provided in class and during Office hours (not by email).

Readings/Bibliography

1) Full reading of:

  • 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.

2) Below are listed only the books from which the texts will be chosen. The texts of the poems to be prepared for the exam (pdf) will be available on the platform Teaching resources on Virtuale since the beginning of the lectures.

  • Gabriele d’Annunzio, Alcyone, Milano, Oscar Mondadori, 1995.
  • Guido Gozzano, La signorina Felicita ovvero La Felicità, in ID., Poesie e prose, introduzione di P.P. Pasolini, a cura di L. Lenzini, Milano, Feltrinelli, 2011.
  • Giuseppe Ungaretti, Il Porto Sepolto, in N. Lorenzini-S. Colangelo, Giuseppe Ungaretti, Firenze, Le Monnier, 2012.
  • 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, a cura di I. Campeggiani e N. Scaffai, Milano, Mondadori, 2019.
  • Andrea Zanzotto, Tutte le poesie, a cura di S. Dal Bianco, Milano, Mondadori, 2011.
  • Amelia Rosselli,Variazioni Belliche, in A. Rosselli, L’opera poetica, a cura di S. Giovannuzzi, con la collaborazione di F. Carbognin, C. Carpita, S. De March, G. Palli Baroni, E. Tandello, Milano, Mondadori, “I Meridiani”, 2012, pp. 3-189.
  • Antonio Porta, Tutte le poesie (1956-1989), a cura di N. Lorenzini, Garzanti, Milano, 2009.

 

Recommended reading

The texts marked with an asterisk will be available on the platform Teaching resources on Virtuale since the beginning of the lectures. The others are available at the Department of Classical Philology and Italian Studies Library.

  • Stephen Kern, Il tempo e lo spazio. La percezione del mondo tra Otto e Novecento, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1988 (Chapter 1) (*).
  • G. Guglielmi, La vita originale di Zeno, in ID., La prosa italiana del Novecento. Umorismo Metafisica Grottesco, Torino, Einaudi, 1986, pp. 30-55 (*).
  • 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. 357-366 (the last paragraph on Saba is optional) (*).
  • Guido Guglielmi, Interpretazione di Ungaretti, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1989 (Chapter 1) (*).
  • Luigi Blasucci, Percorso di un tema montaliano: il tempo, in ID., Gli oggetti di Montale, Il Mulino, Bologna 2002, pp. 87-111 (*).
  • E. Testa, Montale, Torino, Einaudi Tascabili, 2000, pp. 1-77 (*).
  • M. Barenghi, Perché crediamo a Primo Levi?, Torino, Einaudi, 2013 (edizione bilingue), 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 (*).

 

Please note

Additional resources (pages from critical essays about D'Annunzio, Gozzano, futurismo, Svevo, Montale, Levi, Rosselli and Zanzotto) will be available on on the Teaching resources on Virtuale platform at the beginning of the course. These materials, whose knowledge is mandatory, even for non-attending students, are part of the exam program.

 

Program for non-attending students

Students who are not going to attend our classes are also 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.
  • L. Chines, C. Varotti, Che cos'è un testo letterario, Roma, Carocci, 2015.

 

Program for International Students

1) Full reading of:

  • 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.

2) The texts of the poems to be prepared for the exam (pdf) will be available in the Teaching resources section on Virtuale platform. Below are listed only the books from which the texts will be chosen.

  • Guido Gozzano, La signorina Felicita ovvero La Felicità, in ID., Poesie e prose, introduzione di P.P. Pasolini, a cura di L. Lenzini, Milano, Feltrinelli, 2011.
  • Giuseppe Ungaretti, Il Porto Sepolto, in N. Lorenzini-S. Colangelo, Giuseppe Ungaretti, Firenze, Le Monnier, 2012.
  • 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.
  • Amelia Rosselli,Variazioni Belliche, in A. Rosselli, L’opera poetica, a cura di S. Giovannuzzi, con la collaborazione di F. Carbognin, C. Carpita, S. De March, G. Palli Baroni, E. Tandello, Milano, Mondadori, “I Meridiani”, 2012, pp. 3-189.

Recommended reading

  • Stephen Kern, Il tempo e lo spazio. La percezione del mondo tra Otto e Novecento, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1988 (capitolo primo) (*).
  • 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. 357-366 (the last paragraph on Saba is optional).
  • E. Testa, Montale, Torino, Einaudi Tascabili, 2000, pp. 1-77.
  • F. Carbognin, Linguaggio (1956 – 1969), in N. Lorenzini – S. Colangelo [a cura di], Poesia e Storia, Milano, Bruno Mondadori, 2013, pp. 195-239.
  • E. Testa, Amelia Rosselli, in Dopo la lirica: Poeti italiani 1960-2000, Torino, Einaudi, 2005.
  • E. Tandello, Doing the splits. Language(S) In Amelia Rosselli's Poetry, “Journal of the Institute of Romance Studies”, I, 1992.

Teaching methods

Classes (60 hours) involving text analysis with a strong interaction between students and the professor. Attendance: in-person mode.

 

Course timetable

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

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

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

 

Start of the lessons

30 January 2023

End of the lessons

19 April 2023

 

Assessment methods

The final exam consists of 1) a written test and 2) an oral test, which the student will have access after passing the written test (not necessarily in the immediately following session). The final evaluation will consider the evaluation of the two different tests.

 

The program to be prepared for the two tests is the one relating to the year actually attended, even if different from the current one.

 

Any further information will be provided in class, during office hours and at the beginning of each exam session (not by email).

 

1) The written test (held 4 times a year) consists of 2 questions that require answers of 25 lines. Short analyzes of texts discussed in class may be requested. The test will take 2 hours (in addition to about 10 minutes useful for illustrating the test).

 

The evaluation of the written test (expressed as "insufficiente", "sufficiente", "discreto", "buono", "ottimo") will be determined by the level of linguistic-grammatical skills and historical-literary skills acquired by the student during the course.

 

The outcome of the written test is not preclusive: it will be possible to access the oral exam even after a written test evaluated as "insufficiente", unless rated "unclassifiable" due to a writing with severe grammatical and content lacks. The evaluation of the written exam will appear in AlmaEsami at least one day before the oral exam.

 

International students will replace the written test with a 5-10 page essay on a topic agreed in advance with the professor. They will have to enroll in a written exam session; they will have to participate (online) in that exam and deliver the essay (via teams or via e-mail) when requested, during the exam.

 

2) The oral exam consists of an interview on the topics of the course. During the exam, the student will be asked to comment on one or more texts analyzed in class.

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-video resources.

Office hours

See the website of Francesco Carbognin

SDGs

Quality education Gender equality Climate Action

This teaching activity contributes to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals of the UN 2030 Agenda.