Learning objectives
The basic goal is to prepare students to read a literary work and correctly evaluate its formal characteristics and properly set it within the cultural context of its day. <br />
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The specialised unit offers the opportunity for in-depth critical-thematic examination and offers students one of the various research methods.
Prerequisites
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Course unit content
<br />The course is divided into two units, introductory (A) and specialised (B). <br />
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In the first unit, students will be offered an approach to the principal authors and events in Italian literary history through a series of introductory lectures of a theoretical-methodological nature and, following this, in-depth examination of three “classics” to be read in their entirety. The works selected for this year: D. ALIGHIERI, Purgatorio; N. MACHIAVELLI, De Principatibus, C.E. GADDA, La Cognizione del dolore) are contextualised and presented in lectures with critique, broadening the subject to related themes and authors and also examined directly through reading and comment in the classroom of certain particularly important passages of the text. <br />
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The literary theme of unit B is the countryside and the flow of seasons which in 18th century European literature – as well as in art and music – played a central role. The purpose of examining this phenomenon is to reflect upon literary genres and texts sometimes perhaps too superficially judged to be “secondary”, in order to highlight the communicative and philosophical values which find expression in them, and also because of their noteworthy popularity (including in educated audiences) which cannot be dismissed as simply “the fashion of the day”.
Full programme
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Bibliography
Lineamenti di storia letteraria fino al Neorealismo; D. Alighieri, Purgatorio; Machiavelli, De principatibus; Gadda, La cognizione del dolore. <br />
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Parini, Il Giorno e le odi; I. Pindemonte, Prose e poesie campestri, Torino 1990; Antologia di testi di autori settecenteschi. <br />
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R. Assunto, Arte e natura nella poesia stagionale, in Idem, Stagioni e ragioni..., Milano 1967; A. Di Ricco, Tra idillio arcadico e idillio filosofico. Lucca 1995, ch. II and III; F. Fedi, Artefici di numi, Roma 2004, ch. IV and V; R. Bertazzoli, Pindemonte e la poesia delle stagioni, in Alfieri e Pindemonte nella Verona del Settecento, Verona, 2005, pp. 115-44. <br />
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Teaching methods
For all students who sit this exam as the first or only in Italian literature, it consists of a written exam (5 credits: cfr. the Bibliography for unit A) plus an oral exam (5 credits: cfr. the Bibliography for unit B). <br />
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The written exam consists of: (1) a short essay (30 to 60 lines) on an assigned topic; (2) paraphrase of a passage from Dante’s Purgatorio, with brief formal comment; (3) answering 10 questions relative to the texts covered in the lectures (in the introductory unit A) for a complete and in-depth comprehension and principal elements of textual analysis. <br />
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The oral exam consists of an interview on the topics covered in the specialised unit.
Assessment methods and criteria
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Other information
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