THEORY AND HISTORY OF LITERARY GENRES
cod. 24149

Academic year 2013/14
2° year of course - Second semester
Professor
Academic discipline
Critica letteraria e letterature comparate (L-FIL-LET/14)
Field
Attività formative affini o integrative
Type of training activity
Related/supplementary
30 hours
of face-to-face activities
6 credits
hub:
course unit
in - - -

Learning objectives

Knowledge and understanding.
The course aims at strengthening the basic knowledge of literary study, opening the way for a specialized field, and promoting the development of original statements about the thematic net described throughout the course itself.
Applying knowledge and understanding.
The study of literary methods, the learning of the genre theories, and finally the comparative approach elicit the development of the capacity to understand and connect literary facts, in a profoundly interdisciplinary perspective.
Making judgements.
By the end of the course students ought to have acquired the capacity to carefully value the complexity of literary text, critically interpreting their structural elements, the morphological similarities and differences between them. They should also have acquired particular intepretive and comparative abilities about the historical and socio-cultural contexts to which those artistic documents belong.
Communication skills.
By the end of the course students should have conceived the capacity to describe literary texts on the basis of the genre theories and supranational literary study, developing a personal, reliable and consistent way of reading.
Learning skills.
The commitment shown in acquiring competences and learning should provide the students with a definite methodological competence as well as with skills aimed at consolidating their set of readings, their capacity to understand and schematize the dynamics of literary facts – all necessary skills in order to organize contents into the written form.

Prerequisites

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Course unit content

Following an introduction to comparative studies, with a focus on genres, the course will interrogate the developments in the XIX and the XX centuries of a fictional subgenre, the urban novel. Thus, the study of literary forms will incorporate elements of sociological, geographical and architectural disciplines, in order to provide adequate contexts for the narrative cities of Zola, Döblin, Pratolini, and others.

Full programme

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Bibliography

1. Benvenuti-Ceserani, La letteratura nell'età globale, Il Mulino
2. Iacoli, Spire di cemento, forthcoming
3. Zola, Au bonheur des dames
4. Woolf, Mrs Dalloway
5. Doeblin, Berlin Alexanderplatz
6. Pratolini, Il quartiere, Rizzoli

Teaching methods

Frontal lessons. We will see excerpts from cinematic documents. Moreover, an encounter with a geography scholar is scheduled.

Assessment methods and criteria

Oral. A satisfying exam will demonstrate the capacity to connect and interpret in an accurate way forms and thematic as described throughout the course.

Other information

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