Learning objectives
The aim of the first part of the lectures is to endow students with reading skills necessary for critical evaluating of literary text, to teach the correct interpretation of its formal characteristics and its appropriate placing in the context of the cultural panorama typical for the historical period in question.
The monographic part offers the possibility for an in-depth critical-thematic study and aims to equip the students with several of the possible research methods.
Dublin Descriptors
Knowledge and understanding
Teaching Italian literature will endow students with a critical and substantial skills regarding the formal structure of the text, enabling them to apply the acquainted knowledge and understanding.
The study of methodologies and analysis of the techniques of literary communication will facilitate understanding of the structure and content of literary texts. Such an ability, combined with the written practice, will provide students with writing skills suitable for the production of informational content of various kinds.
Making judgments
At the end of the course, thanks to the analytical knowledge accompanied by theoretical, linguistic and literary background, the students should have acquired the ability to collect data and critically interpret the passage in order to formulate independent and motivated judgments regarding the texts within their socio-cultural context.
Communication skills
By approaching the last part of the course, students should have achieved the ability to communicate and write in comprehensible and correct manner and learn to use a particular style - accordingly to the content (literary or essay writing).
Learning skills
The commitment to the theoretical and structural aspects should give students a certain mastery of methodology along with learning skills useful for the access to their future professions, as those of teaching, communication, creative writing.
Prerequisites
They are considered prerequisites: knowledge of the correct spelling and the ability to speak Italian also in writing without serious syntax errors. For the students who have little familiarity with the reading and analysis of literary texts we recommend prior consultation of one of the teaching guides listed in the bibliography. Foreign students who haven’t attended secondary school in Italy are asked to meet with the teacher in order to set up an individual catch-up plan.
Course unit content
The course is divided into two parts. The first part will consist of:
1.institutions of Italian literature (history, metrics, rhetoric),
2.critical methods,
3.aesthetics of reception,
4.intertextuality,
5.hypertextuality
6.communicative rhetoric of the literary text.
The second part, monographic, will talk about the literary genre related to the representation of the self and memory (autobiography, autobiographical novel, diary, memories) with reference to authors from the sixteenth to the twentieth century (Cellini, Casanova, Goldoni, Alfieri, Foscolo, Tozzi, Svevo)
Full programme
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Bibliography
Bibliography - unit I: History of Italian Literature from the fourteenth to the Unification of Italy (Verga included)
G. Ferroni, Storia della letteratura italiana (Einaudi Scuola)
Dante, Inferno: I, III, V, VII, IX, X, XIII, XIV, XXVI, XXXII, XXXIII
H.R. Jauss, Perché la storia della letteratura, Guida Editore; A. Cavalli, Fuga dalla critica, Pàtron Editore, 2007,I. Calvino, Perché leggere i classici
Bibliography unit II:
Critical Studies:
Franco D’Intino, L’autobiografia moderna. Storia, forme, problemi, Roma, Bulzoni, 1998
ANDREA BATTISTINI., Il riflesso nello «specchio d’un’acqua in tempesta». Forme e modi delle autobiografie novecentesche, in: Memorie, autobiografie e diari nella letteratura italiana dell’Ottocento e del Novecento, PISA, Edizioni ETS, 2008, 1, pp. 57 - 75
Books:
Excerpts from: B. CELLINI, Vita; C. GOLDONI, Memorie
Full reading of: V. ALFIERI, Vita; U. FOSCOLO, Le ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis; F. TOZZI, Ricordi di un impiegato; I. SVEVO, La coscienza di Zeno.
Teaching methods
The course of lectures will be supported by a series of textual analytic exercises in seminar form. In order to assure familiarity with the essentials of Italian literature, the first part of the course will be exploiting the notions of ‘author-text-reader relationship’, the variety of critical methods, the value of tradition and canon, aesthetics of reception, intertextuality and hypertextuality.
The cycle of lectures will be also complemented by a series of exercises on basic notions such as those of literary history, metrics, rhetoric, textual analysis (e.g. of Dante's Inferno).
All these contents will be verified and evaluated through written examination.
The second (monographic) part of the course will focus on the subject indicated in the program, throughout a historical, literary and methodological introduction so as to facilitate the analysis of specific texts.
All these contents will be verified and evaluated by an oral examination.
Assessment methods and criteria
Only the second part of the examination is oral and it will be preceded by a written test (first part). To be admitted to the oral exam, it is necessary to reach the sufficiency (18/30) in the written exam.
Concerning the first part, the mark will be determined by the quality of writing (correct spelling, syntax, logical cohesion) and by knowledge of metrical, rhetorical, exegetic notions, as well as those of history of literature. In the second part, the mark will be determined by the communication skills, punctuality and synthesis in the exposition as well as by the knowledge of the specific topics of the course.
Other information
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