00562 - Italian Literature (M-Z)

Learning outcomes

By the end of the course, student will have the tools for textual exegesis (ancient and modern, edited and unpublished) within our secular literary tradition, seen as a cultural heritage and a monument to our national identity.They will know how to judge and use methods of historical analysis applied to documents of Italian literature, keeping a diachronic perspective. They will be able to logically expound and organize complex data and information, so as to formulate independent conclusions and opinions. They will organize information logically and outline it with methodological rigour, care and precision.

Course contents

MODULE A. Italian literature. Reading and commenting texts from Dante to the Nineteenth century.

The first module intends to retrace the fundamental steps of Italian literature through a selection of exemplary pages by the major authors, belonging to different eras and genres, from the Origins to the Nineteenth century, which will be inserted in their historical and literary context. The aim of the course is to provide some university-level reading and commentary models, to allow students to develop a method of analysis of the literary text that is also useful in a didactic perspective; on the other hand, the module A aims to reconstruct, by starting from the texts themselves, the main characteristics of the historical-literary periods examined, in order to insert the study of historical periods in the cultural and literary dimension.

After an introduction to the literary text and an illustration of the "main tools of the scholar of Italian Literature " (i.e. philology, rhetoric, metrics...), texts by the following poets of our literary tradition will be read and commented on: Dante, Petrarca, Boccaccio, Alberti, Ariosto, Machiavelli, Tasso, Foscolo, Leopardi, Manzoni.

 

MODULE B: Conspiracies and Assassinations. Italian Writers Facing Violent Attempts at Power Changes. From Dante to Bianciardi

This module involves literary texts from the 14th to the 20th century to analyze various perspectives on political regime changes through violent actions that writers spoke about in their works, sometimes criticizing them, sometimes supporting them: Dante, who condemns the mother of all conspiracies (the one by Brutus and Cassius against Caesar) but urges Emperor Henry VII to march against his Florence; Petrarch, who in one of his eclogues speaks of the republican coup d'état by Cola di Rienzo in Rome (1347); Poliziano, who, unfortunately for him, becomes a chronicler of the Pazzi Conspiracy in Florence (1478); Machiavelli and Alfieri, who, while not rejecting the violent dimension of power, dissuade from organizing conspiracies to promote a change in political regime. A final section will be dedicated to the second half of the 20th century and two exemplary attacks against power: the one merely envisioned by the anarchist Luciano Bianciardi against a symbol of capitalist power (La vita agra, 1962) and the complex and anguished reflection by Sciascia on the Moro Affair (1978)

 

Readings/Bibliography

Module A

1. G. Alfano, P. Italia, E. Russo, F. Tomasi, Profilo di letteratura italiana. Dalle origini a fine Ottocento, Milano, Mondadori, 2021 (pp. 1-24; 42-56; 142-158; 410-425; 647-703 can be skipped);
2. L. Chines, C. Varotti, Che cos'è un testo letterario?, Roma, Carocci, 2015 (Recommended for doing a good text analysis)
   

 

Module B

Attending students will study for the oral exam the texts and the 'conspiracy' pathway covered by the teacher in class, which will span the following works:

1. Dante Alighieri, lettera a Enrico VII (Epistola VII, in Dante Alighieri, Opere, a cura di M. Santagata, vol. II, Milano, Mondadori, 2014);
2. Francesco Petrarca, Pietas pastoralis (Ecloga V del Bucolicum carmen, ed. L. Canali, Lecce, Manni, 2005, pp. 81-95);
3. Angelo Poliziano, Gentile Becchi, La congiura della verità. Introduzione, commento e cura di M. Simonetta, La Scuola di Pitagora, 2012, pp. 56-85;
   
4. Niccolò Machiavelli, Il principe, capp. XV-XVIII (suggested edition: ed. del cinquecentennale con traduzione a fronte in italiano moderno di Carmine Donzelli; introduzione e commento di Gabriele Pedullà, Roma, Donzelli, 2013); Delle congiure (in Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio, III 6, suggested edition: G. Sasso and G. Inglese, Bur, 2000 or subsequent reprints);
5. Vittorio Alfieri, Fino a qual punto si possa sopportare la tirannide in Della tirannide, II 5 (edited by Marco Cerruti; note di Ezio Falcomer, 2a ed., Milano, Bur, 2000, pp. 176-180);
   
6. Luciano Bianciardi, La vita agra, Milano, Feltrinelli (any edition);
7. Leonardo Sciascia, L'affaire Moro, Milano, Adelphi, 1994 (any edition)

 

In addition to these texts, non-attending students will need to prepare three of the following essays (only the indicated parts are mandatory):

1. Alessandro Barbero, Dante, Bari, Laterza, 2020, capp. 18-19 (pp. 206-242);
2. Lorenzo Geri, Petrarca cortigiano. Francesco Petrarca e la corti da Avignone a Praga, Roma, Bulzoni, 2020, pp. 63-117;
3. Marco Geuna, Machiavelli e il problema delle congiure, "Rivista storica italiana", 127 (2015), n. 2, pp. 355-410 (disponibile su Academia.edu);
   
4. Arnaldo Di Benedetto, Vincenzo Perdichizzi, Alfieri, Salerno 2014, pp. 84-113 (capp. V e VI);
   
5. P. Tincani, Leonardo Sciascia e il potere. Su L'Affaire Moro, "Teoria e Storia del diritto privato", n. speciale 2022 "Il lato oscuro della legge", pp. 1-29 (disponibile su Academia.edu)
6. Giuseppe Allegri, Un rpecario contro il sistema. Ricordando Luciano Bianciardi, in Historia magistra. Rivista di storia critica, IV, 8, 2012, pp. 119-131 (disponibile su Academia.edu)
   

Teaching methods

Frontal lesson and use of power points that will be made available on the IOL platform.

Assessment methods

MODULE A

The exam of MODULE A consists of a written test on EOL platform, a test of 20 closed single-answer questions (max 20 points) and a paraphrase with a brief analysis of a literary text (max 12 points) among those texts included in the file "Testi_Parafrasi_commenti" uploaded on "Virtuale". The proof will last 2 hours. During the course, specific training will be carried out on the exam and a facsimile of the test will be made available in the course materials on the IOL platform.

MODULE B

The knowledge of MODULE B will be verified instead through an oral interview lasting about 20 minutes (max 30 points). The final evaluation will be given by the average of the two tests.

It is strongly recommended to take module A first and then module B.

During the academic year, written exams are scheduled in the months of January, March, May, July, September, and November. Oral exams, on the other hand, are held monthly, except in August.

 

The Criteria of Evaluation

The oral exam consists of a discussion (approx. 20 minutes) about the monographic section about Princes and Letters. Students are required to show the ability to discuss and interpret the assigned texts clearly and persuasively, relating them to their cultural context. Also the student's ability to express himself with clarity and language properties will be evaluated. The standard of oral expression will also be assessed.

• The lack of ability to orientate itself in the literary panorama of Italian culture and to recognize the fundamental characteristics of the major texts of the late 15th and 16th centuries of the program will entail negative voting;
• The student who will grasp the fundamental aspects of the works and authors proposed during the course and will recognize the fundamental questions and the salient features of the most important literary works proposed by professor and its protagonists will achieve a positive evaluation (vote: 26-28);
• An in-depth knowledge of the literary texts will imply a very good (29-30) and even excellent (30L) evaluation. To achieve excellence evaluation a complete understanding of all the topics covered is required, and also the firm possession of the literary chronology (the dates of the major works' output of the authors treated are important), the use of precise technical terminology (in the rhetorical and philological-literary domain, etc). For istance, it is very important that the student is able to say the precise literary genre to which the examined works belong, or to indicate the chronological range of composition in the case of very famous works, and, moreover, a personal critical elaboration of the acquired contents.

Teaching tools

Projection of texts and images, sharing of teaching materials on the platform.

Students who require specific services and adaptations to teaching activities due to a disability or specific learning disorders (SLD) must first contact the appropriate office: https://site.unibo.it/studenti-con-disabilita-e-dsa/en/for-students.

Office hours

See the website of Andrea Severi