Bachelor in ROM or ROGE, with a minor subject in Italian or equivalent.
Depending on the annual program, in this course we study some of the main authors of Italian literature (from the Middle Ages to the XX century). Students are taught to reflect on the genesis of three literary works (one in verse, one in prose, and a play for the theatre) through study of a body of texts and drafts. This allows students to understand the mechanisms and the challenges of writing (on the part of the author), of reading, of interpreting and of editing (in terms of scholarly critique) which all intervene in the production and the reception of literary work.
By the end of the course, students are expected to be able to:
a) read, analyze and interpret a literary text using the methodologies described and adopted in the course,
b) place a literary text within its cultural, linguistic, aesthetic, literary, and scriptural context,
c) identify and interpret different textual levels and their interactions.
The contribution of this Teaching Unit to the development and command of the skills and learning outcomes of the programme(s) can be accessed at the end of this sheet, in the section entitled “Programmes/courses offering this Teaching Unit”.
- Presentation
- Oral exam: verification of reading
- Written work
Lectures with student presentations
Italian opera has had a tremendous social, cultural and political impact in Europe and around the world. It is one of the first genres to enjoy truly global dissemination. Whereas in the eighteenth century Italian opera was an essentially European phenomenon (France, Britain, the Iberian Peninsula, Germany, Scandinavia, Eastern European countries, etc.), in the nineteenth century it conquered the Americas and Russian Asia.
In our course, we will study the narratological and cognitive structures that contributed to ensuring such wide dissemination. We will examine the modes of reception (the spread of libretti as a literary genre, stage production, etc.), the social and political implications, as well as the adaptation strategies that are essential for understanding Italian opera.
Students will have read, understood and analysed the following texts:
'L'Olimpiade (per centinaia di compositori) di Pietro Metastasio
'Il sogno di Scipione (decine di compositori, fra cui Mozart) di Pietro Metastasio
'Francesca da Rimini (molti compositori) di Felice Romani and the corresponding passages in Dante and Boccaccio
'Colombo di Felice Romani (molti compositori)
'Cristoforo Colombo (per Franco Faccio) di Luigi Illica
'Amleto di Arrigo Boito (per Franco Faccio) e Amleto di Shakespeare
'Otello di Arrigo Boito (per Giuseppe Verdi) e Othello di Shakespeare
'Intolleranza 1960 di Angelo Maria Ripellino (per Luigi Nono)
Original libretti, which students will find by consulting online academic catalogues and databases.
Articles and tests in Moodle, articles to be tracked down in the library and in JSTOR/SAGE.
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