75349 - Literature and Visual Studies (LM)

Learning outcomes

The course aims at providing students with theoretical tools for interpreting literature in the new framework of visual culture which emerged at the threshold of modernity. Students acquire a deep knowledge of the relationships between verbal and visual texts in their multiple manifestations, and are familiar with the main theoretical categories and methodologies which have been elaborated by visual studies and have crossed (and transformed) literary studies themselves.

Course contents

Literature and Photography at the Thresholds of Modernism:

The collaboration between Henry James and Alvin Langdon Coburn

Readings/Bibliography

1. Literary Texts:

► Henry James, The Prefaces (only the prefaces to The Portrait of a Lady, What Maisie Knew, The Aspern Papers, and The Golden Bowl)

A. Novels and novellas

► Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

► Henry James, In the Cage

► Henry James, The Aspern Papers

B. Short Stories

► Henry James, The Real Thing

► Henry James, Four Meetings

2. Testi critici:

► Alvin Langdon Coburn Photographer: An Autobiography, a cura di Helmut e Alison, Gernsheim, New York, Dover Publications

► Philip Dubois, L'acte photographique

► Susan Sontag, On Photography

► Silvia Albertazzi, Letteratura e fotografia

► Michela Vanon, “Introduzione”, in Id. (a cura di), Camera Work. La rivista fotografica di Alfred Stieglitz 1903-1917, Torino, Einaudi.

► Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"

► https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvin_Langdon_Coburn

Instead of Albertazzi's Letteratura e fotografia and Vanon's "Introduction", students may read: Ralph F. Bogardus, Pictures and Texts. Henry James, A.L. Coburn, and New Ways of Seeing in Literary Culture, Ann Arbor, Michigan, UMI Research Press.

Office hours

See the website of Donata Meneghelli