Fall 2009 Literature and Culture Courses
ITAL V3333x Introduction to Italian Literature I
Andrea Malaguti
Monday, Wednesday 11:00-12:15, Hamilton Hall 501
Forms a sequence with ITAL W3334y that is the basic course in Italian Literature. Authors and works from the duecento to the cinquecento. In Italian.
ITAL G4050 The Medieval Lyric: From the Scuola Siciliana To
Dante
Teodolinda Barolini
Monday 2:10-4:00, Hamilton Hall
This course maps the origins of the Italian lyric, starting in Sicily
and following its development in Tuscany, in the poets of the dolce
stil nuovo and ultimately, Dante. Lectures in English; text in Italian,
although comparative literature students who can follow with the help
of translations are welcome.
ITAL G4079 Boccaccio's Decameron
Teodolinda Barolini
Wednesday 2:10-4:00, Hamilton Hall
While focusing on the Decameron, this course follows the arc of Boccaccio's
career from the Ninfale Fiesolano, through the Decameron, and concluding with
the Corbaccio, using the treatment of women as the connective thread. The
Decameron is read in the light of its cultural density and contextualized in
terms of its antecedents, both classical and vernacular, and of its
intertexts, especially Dante's Commedia, with particular attention to
Boccaccio's masterful exploitation of narrative as a means for undercutting
all absolute certainty. Lectures in English; text in Italian, although
comparative literature students who can follow with the help of translations
are welcome.
ITAL G4120 Futurism and Beyond: F.T. Marinetti's Poetry, Narrative,
and Drama
Paolo Valesio
Tuesday 4:10-6:00, Hamilton Hall
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, the founder of Futurism (arguably the first great
avant-garde movement in modern European literature), is also one of the most
remarkable writers of the Italian 20th century in his own terms. The course
will explore Marinetti's basic contribution to modern Italian literature.
Available editions as well as the typescripts of forthcoming books will be
used. Marinetti's epoch-making contribution will also be studied in a
comparative European and American context. Lectures in English, most texts in
Italian, some in French; open also to comparative literature students who can
read Italian and French with the help of translations.
ITAL G4390 Gender and Literary Identity: the Experience of Italian
Women Writers 1870-1930
Flora Ghezzo
Tuesday 6:10-8:00, Hamilton Hall
A study of women writers working in Italy from the Unification to the
1930's. Examination of how they shaped and defined their status, how they
mediated between their own experience and those dominant modes of
representation and discourse that constituted the Italian literary tradition;
and the fictional portrayal of the woman writer in male-authored texts. In
Italian.
ITAL W4140 Fictionalizing History: Fascism in Literature and
Film
Flora Ghezzo
Thursday 4:10-6:00, Hamilton Hall
The course aims at providing students with a broad knowledge of the political
and cultural issues affecting Italy in the crucial, dramatic years between
1922 and 1943. Against the backdrop of Mussolini's politics, our
investigation examines the complex, multifaceted ways the dictatorship has
been portrayed in fiction and cinema. Our research will require the
evaluation of written texts, visual artifacts, and films produced both during
this period and after it. Starting with the cinematic portrayal given in
Bertolucci's Novecento, we will analyze some fundamentals of the fascist
doctrine and the most prominent strategies through which Fascism succeeded in
creating a popular consensus (i.e., social projects and sophisticated
techniques of propaganda). Then we will proceed alternating the analysis of
historical documents with literary and cinematic works authored by Marinetti,
Moravia, Vittorini, De Cespedes, Camerini, Scola and Fellini.
Spring 2010 Italian Literature Courses
(Tentative schedule)
ITAL V3334 Introduction To Italian Literature II
Andrea Malaguti
Monday, Wednesday 11:00-12:15, Hamilton Hall 501
Second part of the V3333x- V3334y sequence that is the basic course in
Italian Literature. In Italian.
ITAL W4018 The Theory and Practice of Writing II: Laboratorio di
Traduzione
Paolo Valesio
Monday, Wednesday 4:10-5:25, Hamilton Hall
Experiments and analyses of translations, especially from literary texts,
from English into Italian and from Italian into English. Classroom discussion
of aspects of the translation process, and of the general interpretation of
the translated texts. Each student will keep a "Translation Notebook." In
Italian.
ITAL G4089 Petrarch's Canzoniere
Teodolinda Barolini
Tuesday 2:10-4:00, Hamilton Hall
A reading of the
Canzoniere that explicates Petrarch as he fashions himself authorially in contrast to Dante, returning deliberately to Occitan and earlier Italian poets, and that brings to bear ideas on time and narrative from authors such as Augustine and Ricoeur in order to reconstruct the metaphysical significance of collecting fragments in what was effectively a new genre: the lyric sequence. We will consider this new genre in the light of the manuscript and codicological evidence, reconstructing Petrarch's painstaking transcription of his poems from his draft notebooks (VL 3196) into the
Rerum vulgarium fragmenta (VL 3195). We will also read Petrarch's
Secretum and
Trionfi. Lectures in English; text in Italian, although comparative literature students who can follow with the help of translations are welcome.
ITAL G4280 Gabriele d'Annunzio: Between Two Centuries
Paolo Valesio
Monday 6:10-8:00, Hamilton Hall
The course examines the exceptional contribution of d'Annunzio to Italian
literature as it moves from late nineteenth century symbolism to early
twentieth century modernism. While all the genres illustrated by this
prolific author will be sampled (newspaper article, short story, drama,
novel, narrative notebook, memoir, private letter, critical and political
essay, diary), special attention will be paid to his poetry. Lectures in
English, texts in Italian.
ITAL G4391 Challenging Genres, Gendering Fiction: the Experience of
Italian Women Writers, 1945-90
Flora Ghezzo
Tuesday 6:10-8:00
Addresses women writers working in Italy from the postwar period to the
1990s. Analyzes the historical novel, fantastic fiction, and autobiography.
Against the backdrop of the critical debate on the literary canon, explores
the specificity of women's writing and the way these articulated their
difference by subverting and altering dominant literary codes. In Italian.
ITAL G6077 Studies In Dante
Teodolinda Barolini
Thursday 2:10-4:00, Hamilton Hall
Prerequisite: knowledge of the
Commedia. Research seminar in various areas of Dante studies, such as Dante's relation to the classics or Dante's lyric past. Variable content course open to qualified graduate students with the instructor's permission.
This year we will deal with the history of lyric collections: we will consider Dante's uncollected lyrics and the innovative move to create a collection of lyrics in his Vita Nuova. What differentiates the Vita Nuova from Dante's other lyrics on the one hand and from Petrarch's lyric sequence on the other? Again we will consider the manuscript and codicological evidence, in particular Boccaccio's Chigiano codex, in which he transcribed the Vita Nuova, fifteen of Dante's canzoni, and an early form Petrarch's Canzoniere.
ITAL W4255 Foundations of the Italian Novel, 1840-1900
Andrea Malaguti
Monday, Wednesday 1:10-2:25, Hamilton Hall
An investigative overview of the Italian novel from the Risorgimento to the
end of the 19th century, with special attention to the novelistic form, the
shaping of the national identity, and the reception of the European novel in
Italy. Authors include Manzoni, De Marchi, Verga, De Roberto, D'Annunzio,
Svevo. In Italian.
ITAL W4401 WWII, the Resistance and the Holocaust In Italian
Literature and Cinema
Flora Ghezzo
The political, social, and cultural issues affecting Italy in the crucial,
dramatic years between 1943 and 1945. More specifically, the canonical
literary and cinematic representations of the war, the "Resistenza" and the
Holocaust and the aesthetic issues related to the encounter between history
and fiction, reality and imagination. Further examination of how the war has
affected women: such an inquiry will require the evaluation of lesser-known
women's texts.Topics to be addressed include: war and gender, women as
subjects of history, the intersection of the political and the private.
Authors to be examined include: Calvino, Fenoglio,Pavese, Levi, Rossellini,
Wertmuller, Rosi, Vigano', Milli, Zangrandi, D'Eramo.
