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

The course is worth nine credits for the duration of ten weeks, amounting to 60 hours of lessons.

The first weeks will be introductory and will be dedicated to the authors in the program and to the developing of the Italian novel between the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. In the following weeks we will increase knowledge of individual authors and we will analyse their novels, especially focusing on the voice and person of the narrator, and on the political meanings of his telling.

Readings/Bibliography

Students will read and study the following books:

• Ugo Foscolo, Ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis: 1) a cura di G. Ioli, Torino, Einaudi, dal 1995 e successive ristampe; oppure 2) a cura di G. Davico Bonino, Milano, Mondadori, 1986 e successive ristampe;

• Ippolito Nievo, Le confessioni di un Italiano: 1) a cura di S. Romagnoli, Venezia, Marsilio, 1990 e successive ristampe; oppure 2) a cura di M. Gorra, Milano, Mondadori, 1981 e successive ristampe;

• Italo Calvino, La giornata di uno scrutatore, Milano, Mondadori, 1990 e successive ristampe;

• Leonardo Sciascia, Il contesto. Una parodia, Milano, Adelphi, 1998 e successive ristampe.

Students will study the following critical tests:

• Riccardo Stracuzzi, Ugo Foscolo e la scuola della rivoluzione, in Itinerari nella letteratura italiana, a cura di N. Bonazzi, A. Campana, F. Giunta, N. Maldina, Roma, Carocci, 2018², pp. 228-238;
• Laura Nay, Ippolito Nievo: le «Confessioni» di un “franc chasseur” della letteratura, ivi, pp. 284-297;
• Giuliana Benvenuti, Microfisica della memoria. Leonardo Sciascia e le forme del racconto, Bologna, Bononia University Press, 2013, cap. I, Linee che convergono, pp. 23-65.

Ulteriori materiali critici saranno illustrati e forniti dal docente durante le prime lezioni.

 

Teaching methods

The lessons are, most of all, lectures held by the teacher. During the lessons, students will be encouraged to participate and invited to bring a contribution to the course. 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. 

Office hours

See the website of Riccardo Stracuzzi