02609 - Italian Contemporary Literature

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

Among Exoticism and Orientalism: The Italian Narrative Travels in the Twentieth Century.

The course is worth nine credits for the duration of ten weeks, amounting to 60 hours of lessons. Starting from a synopsis of historical and anthropological reasons that pushed the westerly travellers to turn themselves into explorers, exotic lovers or orientalists, the course will focus on a comparative reading of some travelling discourses by important italian authors in the Twentieth Century. This course will introduce the students to the variety of narrative writings, techniques or strategies (reportages, docu-fictions or ghraphic novels) to show the complex relationship between reality and fiction, identity recognition and portrayal of otherness in the age of global travels and tourism industry.

Readings/Bibliography

Students will fully read the following books:

 

I modulo (30 ore)

Pier Paolo Pasolini, L'odore dell'India, Guanda, Parma, 2005

Alberto Moravia, Un'idea dell'India, Bompiani, Milano, 2001

Igort, Sinfonia a Bombay, Coconino Press, Bologna, 2014.

 

II modulo (30 ore)

Giorgio Manganelli, Cina e altri orienti, Bompiani, Milano, 1974 (ora Adelphi, 2013)

Alberto Arbasino, Trans-Pacific Express, Garzanti, Milano, 1981 (solo pp. 52-68 e pp. 130-219).

Luigi Malerba, Cina, Cina, Manni, Lecce, 1985

Igort, Quaderni giapponesi, Coconino Press, Bologna, 2015 (oppure V. Filosa, Viaggio a Tokyo, Canicola, Bologna, 2015).

 

Necessary critical essays:

G. Benvenuti, Il viaggiatore come autore. L'India nella letteratura italiana del Novecento, Il Mulino, Bologna, 2008 (solo i capp. I-II-IV-V).

E.J. Leed, La mente del viaggiatore. Dall'Odissea al turismo globale, Il Mulino, Bologna, 1992 (solo la parte seconda, Il viaggio filosofico, pp. 163-247).

E. Said, Orientalismo, Feltrinelli, Milano, 2002.

 

Suggest critical essays:

F. Milani, Il Marco Polo di Manganelli, in «Poetiche», 2/3, 2010, pp. 409-432.

D. Santarone, La mediazione letteraria in prospettiva interculturale: la rappresentazione della Cina in Alberto Moravia, Franco Fortini e Alberto Arbasino, in M. Fiorucci (a cura di), Incontri: spazi e luoghi della mediazione interculturale, Armando, Roma, 2004, pp. 29-57.

D. Soscia, Forma Sinarum. Personaggi cinesi nella letteratura italiana, Mimesis, Milano-Udine, 2016.

Teaching methods

The lessons are, most of all, lectures held by the teacher. During the lessons, students will be encouraged to participate. We will use also some tools to support teaching, especially power-point. Movies and documentaries will be shown for the contextualization of readings scheduled. Finally, scholars 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.

Teaching tools

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

Office hours

See the website of Giuliana Benvenuti

See the website of Angela Di Fazio