93260 - Orality, Textual Transmission, Media (1)

Learning outcomes

By the end of the course unit students will be sensitive to information and how it is communicated; they will know how to analyse sources, bearing in mind how society is conditioned by means of communication. They will be familiar with historians’ various views on the issue. They will be able to apply the basic theory and methodology to organize, preserve and disseminate the documentary heritage. They will make critical use of the main search tools and methods, and be able to apply the tools of historical analysis needed in cataloguing, appraising, disseminating and conserving the historical and cultural heritage. They will be able to collect, select, process and summarize complex documentary information, so as to formulate independent conclusions and opinions. They will organize information logically and outline it with methodological rigour, care and precision

Course contents

The advent of the internet and the development of social media, with their hybrid languages (not only words, but also sounds and images) has posed new questions to the study of the role of the media in the centuries preceding the eruption into our daily life of these new ways of communicating, which coexist with more traditional forms (we continue to read books on paper and write by hand). Historiography has long recognized the crucial role of the press in shaping ideas, imaginaries, beliefs, in forming a public space of opinion, in accelerating cultural and political processes (such as the Reformation, Scientific Revolution, French Revolution) that characterize the modern world. However, in recent years, historical studies have reinterpreted the role of the press taking note of the presence of a “multimedia system”, in which handwritten and printed writing, orality and images not only coexist, but interact constantly. A world, the one between the late Middle Ages and the long Early modern age, inhabited and continuously transformed by words, and by ancient and new systems of producing and transmitting them.

The course covers a chronological period between the 15th and 19th centuries.

Among the issues that will be addressed:

- media, communication, information, public opinion: introduction to concepts, problems and historiographies

- orality and writing: separate rooms or worlds that coexist and influence each other?

- the invention of printing: a slow revolution?

- books and actors (production and material distribution of the book, gender, social and intellectual conditions of the readers)

- words that divide, words that unite: the role of communication in the Reformation

- words and images under control: forms and means of censorship

- avvisi, gazettes, newspapers: how the "news" is born

- communication infrastructures: men and women, animals, means of transport, postal systems

- communicating in extraordinary times: epidemics, wars, catastrophes

- Early modern psychology: reading and imagination (theories on fantasy, visions of the human being)

Readings/Bibliography

Attending students will add to the lecture notes the study of:

Andrew Pettegree, L’invenzione delle notizie. Come il mondo arrivò a conoscersi, Einaudi, Torino 2015

Lodovica Braida, Stampa e cultura in Europa tra XV e XVI secolo, Laterza, Roma-Bari, 2000

Moreover, they will add a book among the one listed below:

Giorgio Caravale, Libri pericolosi. Censura e cultura italiana in età moderna, Laterza, Bari-Roma, 2022

Sandro Landi, Stampa, censura e opinione pubblica in età moderna, il Mulino, Bologna 2011

Ottavia Niccoli, Muta eloquenza: gesti nel Rinascimento e dintorni, Roma, Viella, 2021

Walter J. Ong, Oralità e scrittura. Le tecnologie della parola, il Mulino, Bologna, 2014

Pasquale Palmieri, L'eroe criminale. Giustizia, politica e comunicazione nel XVIII secolo, il Mulino, Bologna, 2022

Xenia von Tippelskirch, Sotto controllo: letture femminili in Italia nella prima età moderna, Viella, Roma, 2011

Non-attending students will add the essays by A. Grafton, R. Chartier, R. Wittmann in G. Cavallo, R. Chartier (edd), Storia della lettura nel mondo occidentale, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2017 (2009)

Teaching methods

The course will be held through lectures.

Assessment methods

Students who attend at least 75% of the lessons are considered to be attending.

The exam will take place in oral form. Students' familiarization with the concepts, issues and methodologies addressed during the course will be assessed.

The evaluation will take into account the ability of the student to orient herself within the sources and the bibliographic material, to illustrate themes and problems and to establish connections.

Attention will be given to:

- The ability to master the subject

- The ability to synthesize and analyze themes and concepts

- The ability to express oneself adequately and with language appropriate to the subject matter

The achievement by the student of an organic vision of the topics addressed in class together with their critical use, a good command of expression and specific language will be evaluated with marks of excellence.

A mnemonic knowledge of the subject, together with synthesis and analysis skills articulated in a correct but not always appropriate language, will lead to discrete evaluations.

Training gaps and / or inappropriate language - albeit in a context of minimal knowledge of the exam material - will lead to grades that will not exceed sufficiency.

Training gaps, inappropriate language, lack of orientation within the bibliographic materials offered during the course will be evaluated negatively.

Teaching tools

Presentations in power point format, sources, essays, online repertoires can be provided by the teacher. The materials will be made available in the specific section of the University website.

Office hours

See the website of Fernanda Alfieri