Learning objectives
Knowledge and understanding.
The course will provide the students with a basic understanding of the rhetorical, thematic and ideological structures of fictional 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 a wider set of texts and artistic genres, developing a learned and critical readership, or spectatorship.
Making judgements.
By the end of the course, students should be able to apply their judgements to a theoretically grounded 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 literary texts.
Learning skills.
Trained to read texts which belong to a cultural tradition, students should develop critical skills, in order to successfully study the contemporary literary panorama. They should also improve their judgement abilities about what they have learnt (literary-historical knowledge) in order to structure their final dissertation, as well as to prepare themselves to the reading abilities required by the second cycle of studies.
Prerequisites
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Course unit content
Between sociology and literary theory.
A key figure of modernity, the homosexual plays a pivotal role in modernist literature (Proust, Gide, Mann, Cocteau), embodying a well-defined antisocial symbology. Isolated, elitist, often in the fringes (legally as well as socially), often touched by Art, unwilling to join prearranged roles as marriage and paternity, marked by exclusion and gossip, the homosexual character, however late, from the late Thirties onwards, becomes steadily part of Italian fiction. From now on, his alternative as well as meaningful perspective will be examined through the passing of decades: a period which stems from the late European Bildungsroman, to encompass modes of being and profound transformations which take place in the Italian society (Bassani, Ginzburg, Tondelli, Siti).
Full programme
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Bibliography
1. Sini, Sinopoli (a cura di), Percorsi di teoria e comparatistica letteraria, Pearson 2021.
2. André Gide, The Immoralist (any original or translated versions)
3. Robert Musil, The Confessions of Young Master Törless (any original or translated versions)
4. Edward Morgan Forster, Maurice (any original or translated versions)
5+6. Natalia Ginzburg, Valentino + Sagittario, in Cinque romanzi brevi, Einaudi
Further readings will be available on the Ellly webpage of the course.
Teaching methods
Taught class, directed readings and public confrontation on selected narrative passages.
Assessment methods and criteria
Oral exams. Questions will firstly regard the handbook, in order to subsequently involve themes, plot turns, the development of characters, as inferable from the reading of 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
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