09435 - Theory of Literature (M-Z)

Learning outcomes

At the end of the course, students possess basic knowledge of some general concepts of literature, the functioning of literary institutions, the relationship between text and context, and the dynamics of literary communication. They know and can use the main practical methodologies for the analysis of the literary text, in its rhetorical, formal, stylistic, thematic and ideological components.

Course contents

Once upon a time, Modernism

Modernism is a decisive moment in Western culture and literary history, which brought about epochal changes in literary forms, deconstructing the classical narrative, questioning established procedures and reading habits. Was modernism a movement? A period from a chronological point of view? How long did it last? What remains of it today? Did it represent a ‘crisis’ or a ‘regeneration’ of forms? Starting from these questions and from a focus on the historical and cultural coordinates of modernism, the course will investigate the transformations that affected the novel form in the first four decades of the Twentieth century, with particular attention to the dimension of narrative time, to the dialectic between material (exterior) life and psychic life, to the interior monologue, to the loss of authority of the narrating voice, to the rarefaction characters.

Readings/Bibliography

LITERARY TEXTS

Edward Morgan Forster, Casa Howard (1910), Feltrinelli

Marcel Proust, Combray, prima sezione di Dalla parte di Swann (1913), in Alla ricerca del tempo perduto, Mondadori, vol. I, pp. 1-227 (si raccomanda la lettura del testo in questa edizione, traduzione di Giovanni Raboni)

Italo Svevo, La coscienza di Zeno (1923), edizione consigliata in Italo Svevo, Romanzi e “continuazioni”, a cura di Nunzia Palmieri e Fabio Vittorini, “Meridiani” Mondadori

Arthur Schnitzler, La signorina Else (1924), Adelphi

Virginia Woolf, Al faro (1927), Feltrinelli

Jean Rhys, Il grande mare dei Sargassi (1966), Adelphi

 

CRITICAL TEXTS (SECTION A, mandatory)

Gérard Genette, Figure III. Discorso del racconto, Einaudi

Edouard Dujardin, Il monologo interiore, Pratiche

Eric Auerbach, “Il calzerotto marrone”, in Id, Mimesis. Il realismo nella letteratura occidentale, Einaudi, vol. II, pp. 305-343.

Giacomo Debenedetti, “Joyce e Proust” (pp. 285-305) e “Italo svevo” (pp. 516-626), in Id., Il romanzo del Novecento, Garzanti

Virginia Woolf, “Mr. Bennet e Mrs. Brown”, con testo a fronte, Rogas (o qualunque altra edizione)

 

CRITICAL TEXTS (SECTION B): one essay amongo those listed in this section

Federico Bertoni, La faccia oscura del modernismo, in Giancarlo Alfano, Claudia Carmina (a cura di), Frontiere/fratture. Il senso del tempo nella storia della letteratura italiana, Palumbo, pp. 83-103

Remo Ceserani, Italy and Modernity: Peculiarities and Contradictions, in Luca Somigli, Mario Moroni (a cura di), Italian Modernism. Italian Culture between Decadentism and Avant-Garde, University of Toronto Press, pp. 35-62

Raffaele Donnarumma, Tracciato del modernismo italiano, in Romano Luperini, Massimiliano Tortora (a cura di), Sul modernismo italiano, Liguori, p. 34 ss.

Mario Lavagetto, Svevo nella terra degli orfani, in Mario Lavagetto, Lavorare con piccoli indizi, Bollati Boringhieri, pp. 277-298

Vicki Mahaffey, Streams Beyond Consciousness, Stylistic Immediacy in the Modernist Novel, in Jean-Michel Rabaté (a cura di), A Handbook of Modernism Studies, Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 35-54

Donata Meneghelli, Quanto è modernista il “modernismo italiano”? Letteratura mondiale, storia letteraria, periodizzazione, in Silvia Contarini, Margherita Marras, Giuliana Pias, Lucia Quaquarelli (a cura di), La letteratura italiana al tempo della globalizzazione, “Narrativa”, nn. 35-36, 2013-14, pp. 77-91

Luca Somigli, Dagli “uomini del 1914” alla “planetarietà”. Quadri per una storia del concetto di modernismo, «Allegoria», n. 63, 2011, pp. 7-29 (http://www.allegoriaonline.it/PDF/422.pdf)

Susan Stanford Friedman, Definitional Excursions: The Meanings of Modern/Modernity/Modernism, in Pamela Caughie (a cura di), Disciplining Modernism, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 11-33

David Trotter, The Modernist Novel, in Michael Levenson (a cura di), The Cambridge Companion to Modernism, Cambridge University Press, pp. 69-98

Teaching methods

Through in-class reading of passages from the literary texts, students will be encouraged to reflect and intervene, also bringing into play their personal heritage of literary and cultural references, their modes of reading and interpretation. Supplementary materials will be provided to the students and discussed during the lessons, in a dialogic and interactive manner; supplementary materials will be made available on the Unibo Virtual platform [https://virtuale.unibo.it/] .

Office hours

See the website of Donata Meneghelli