B1655 - Literature and Visual Studies (1) (LM)

Learning outcomes

The course aims at providing students with theoretical tools for interpreting literature in the new framework of visual culture which emerged at the threshold of modernity. Students acquire a deep knowledge of the relationships between verbal and visual texts in their multiple manifestations, and are familiar with the main theoretical categories and methodologies which have been elaborated by visual studies and have crossed (and transformed) literary studies themselves

Course contents

Seeing literature: the typographical space of the novel

Any text materializes in a concrete support that ensures its circulation and fruition. This support makes the text an object that is not only read but also looked at and more generally perceived in its visual dimension, in iconic rather than symbolic terms, a trait that helps us rethink the relationship between language and image. For about a millennium, the main medium was paper and, starting from in the 15th century, printed paper. The course aims to tackle the transformations of typographical conventions, their effect on reading, the emergence of the order of the page as a visual and at the same time cognitive space, printing typefaces, internal partitions within the text, textual units such as the chapter or paragraph, titling, continuities and discontinuities that segment the text, taking as its terrain of investigation the novel from the eighteenth century to Modernism and the different modes of spatialization through which it was constituted - also visually - as a genre. Transformations that it is also important to read in the context of recent technological transformations and the emergence of new media, such as digital media or audiobooks.

Classes will be held in the second semester (February-March).

Readings/Bibliography

1.Literary texts:

Denis Diderot, Jacques il fatalista e il suo padrone (1796), Rizzoli

Honoré de Balzac, La musa del dipartimento (1843), Marsilio

Lewis Carroll, Alice nel paese delle meraviglie (1865), ed. illustrata, Rizzoli

William Faulkner, L’urlo e il furore (1929), Einaudi

 

2. Critical texts:

A. Books

W.J.T. Mitchell, Pictorial Turn. Saggi di cultura visuale, :duepunti edizioni o Raffaele Cortina

Michel Melot, Libro, edizioni Sylvestre Bonnard

Gérard Genette, Soglie, Einaudi (solo la parte sul peritesto, pp. 3-336)

B. Essays and articles

Nicholas Dames, “In Which an Object Is Proposed for Analysis”, in Id, The Chapter. A Segmented History from Antiquity to the Twentieth-First Century, Princeton University Press, pp. 11-44 (gli studenti che non leggono l’inglese sono pregati di contattare la prof. Meneghelli)

Roland Barthes, “Letteratura e discontinuità”, in Id. Saggi critici, Einaudi, pp. 170-183.

Donata Meneghelli, “William Faulkner: calendari, orologi e altri disperati tentativi di dominare il tempo”, in Impossibilia, ottobre 2012, pp. 262-276.

Giuseppe Carrara, “L’illustrazione. Un problema di teoria letteraria”, in Letteratura e letterature, 15, 2021, pp. 129-147.

(i saggi e singoli capitoli saranno messi a disposizione degli studenti dalla prof. Meneghelli tramite Virtuale)

Teaching methods

This 30 hours course is based on the reading, analysis and discussion of literary and non-literary texts. During the lectures, students will be invited to take an active part, with questions and insights.
Further downloadable materials in support of the lessons such as digital images, power point presentations and readings will be uploaded on the Moodle Unibo Virtuale [https://virtuale.unibo.it] during the course.

Assessment methods

The abilities acquired during the course will be evaluated through an oral test aimed at ascertaining a deep knowledge of all the topics covered during the course. The oral test consists in an interview aimed at evaluating the students' critical and methodological skills. Students will be invited to discuss the texts in the reading list and comment on them. Therefore students must demonstrate an appropriate knowledge of the recommended reading list.

Students who are able to demonstrate a wide and systematic understanding of the issues covered during the course, to tackle them critically, and who master the critical jargon of the discipline will be given a mark of excellence. Students who demonstrate a mere mnemonic knowledge of the subject together with a more superficial analytical ability to synthesize, a correct command of the critical jargon but not always appropriate, will be given a ‘fair' mark. A superficial knowledge and understanding of the course topics, a scarce analytical and expressive ability will be rewarded with a pass mark or just above a pass mark. Students who demonstrate gaps in their knowledge of the main topics, inappropriate language skills, lack of familiarity with the syllabus reading list will not be given a pass mark.

Office hours

See the website of Donata Meneghelli