Learning objectives
Knowledge and understanding.
The course will provide the students with a basic understanding of the rhetorical, stylistic, thematic and ideological structures of literary, dramatic, and cinematic texts.
Applying knowledge and understanding.
By providing a constant guide to the activity of reading, and showing a specific interest in the single points of view, as expressed by the rewritings, the course aims at generating a peculiar consciousness of the way both characters and narrators voice one’s own vision of literature and of the world. Students should be able to apply their knowledge and interpretive skills to the classical tradition, as well as to a wider set of texts and artistic genres, developing a learned and critical spectatorship. A peculiar form of understanding will result from the practice of analysis of the processes of intersemiotic translation.
Making judgements.
By the end of the course, students should be able to apply their judgements to a theoretically grounded, supranational level of textual reading. They should also be able to show the capacity to correctly situating the texts in the epoch and cultural atmosphere which gave them life. Students will interpret them in a critically founded way, paying attention to narrative devices, themes, genres, poetics, as consistently employed by their authors.
Communication skills.
By the end of the course, students ought to show the capacity to master the expression of textual contents, knowing how to point out and communicate the identifying and connecting elements which run across a defined series of texts.
Learning skills.
Trained to read literary as well as artistic texts which belong to geographically and historically different cultures, students should develop critical skills, in order to successfully study the contemporary art panorama. They should also improve their judgement abilities about what they have learnt in order to structure their final dissertation, as well as to prepare themselves to the reading abilities, as required by the second cycle of studies.
Prerequisites
- - -
Course unit content
Ferrante Fever: "My Brilliant Friend" in the Age of Transmedia Storytelling
Novels no longer are what they used to be: they are written in a different way, and in different ways they are being read. Immersed in a “media space” (I. Piazza) that has undergone profound transformations in recent decades and is still undergoing continuous modification, literary texts – but more generally, the medium that we define as “literature” – has now to be considered as nothing more of a single element in a network of several objects and different media. With what tools should we move as readers and interpreters in today's stories and narrative worlds? The course aims to offer a comprehensive overview of the study of "literature in the media arena" (G. Benvenuti) through the analysis of a single case study, Elena Ferrante's “My Brilliant Friend”. The so-called “Neapolitan Novels” will be investigated along their extraordinarily rich transmedia reception (including TV series, theater adaptation, and graphic novel), which will soon be completed, as far as the TV series is concerned, with the fourth season expected to come out in 2024.
Full programme
- - -
Bibliography
Bibliografia
1. G. Benvenuti (a cura di), La letteratura oggi. Romanzo, editoria, transmedialità, Einaudi 2023 (selected chapters: an updated list will be provided by the beginnings of the course)
2. Chines-Varotti, Che cos'è un testo letterario, nuova edizione, Carocci, 2015 (only for students who do not take advantage of workshop)
3. E. Ferrante, L'amica geniale, Edizioni e/o 2011 (vol. 1)
4. E. Ferrante, Storia del nuovo cognome, Edizioni e/o 2012 (L'amica geniale, vol. 2)
5. E. Ferrante, Storia di chi fugge e di chi resta, Edizioni e/o 2013 (L'amica geniale, vol. 3)
6. E. Ferrante, Storia della bambina perduta, Edizioni e/o 2014 (L'amica geniale, vol. 4)
NB: There is no differentiated program for students who cannot attend the lessons
NB2: See the Elly platform for more critical materials
Teaching methods
Frontal lessons. Screening and analysis of films in the classroom. More didactic material online, on the Elly platform.
Assessment methods and criteria
Oral examination based on the analysis of one or diverse narrative passages, as well as on some questions, aimed to prove the student's knowledge of the contents of both the handbook(s) and literary texts.
Evaluation: A fail is determined by the lack of an understanding of the minimum content of the course, the inability to express oneself adequately, by a lack of autonomous preparation, the inability to solve problems related to information retrieval and the decoding of complex texts, as well as an inability to make independent judgments. A pass (18-23/30) is determined by the student’s possession of the minimum, fundamental contents of the course, an adequate level of autonomous preparation and ability to solve problems related to information retrieval and the decoding of complex texts, as well as an acceptable level of ability in making independent judgments. Middle-range scores (24-27/30) are assigned to the student who produces evidence of a more than sufficient level (24-25/30) or good level (26-27/30) in the evaluation indicators listed above. Higher scores (from 28/30 to 30/30 cum laude) are awarded on the basis of the student’s demonstration of a very good or excellent level in the evaluation indicators listed above.
Other information
- - -
