Italian literature and civilization: from the twentieth century to today

Teacher(s)

Maeder Costantino;

Language

Italian

Prerequisites

LFIAL1175, LROM1170

The prerequisite(s) for this Teaching Unit (Unité d’enseignement – UE) for the programmes/courses that offer this Teaching Unit are specified at the end of this sheet.

Main themes

The course offers students an interdisciplinary presentation of Italian literature, history and history of art from the 20th century to the present day. From the linguistic point of view, students will be introduced to academic writing in Italian.

Learning outcomes

At the end of this learning unit, the student is able to :
1	- should know the broad outlines of the cultural history of Italy from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; - have developed the ability to follow a course in Italian; - should be able to understand Italian literary, philosophical, journalistic, cinematic texts; - should be able to provide information on major events of the nineteenth and twentieth century, by analyzing in parallel how they represent the different sources (written and audiovisual); - have developed a high language proficiency in Italian and autonomy in research.

Content

Students will discover literary and artistic masterpieces from the late 20th century to the present day. This period was marked by the growth and defeat of Fascism, and by the two World Wars. Society has undergone great changes from the post-War period to the present day, and many examinations of a variety of themes have appeared: internal and external migration, the question of genre, writers from elsewhere (from other countries), major social change, the flourishing of new forms of writing (for the cinema, Vimeo), the question of the mezzogiorno. All this examination has profoundly marked Italian literature, which is increasingly open to the globalised world. Students will discover the works of authors such as Italo Calvino, Giorgio Bassani, Leonardo Sciascia, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Primo Levi as well as the more recent generation of women's writing (Ornela Vorpsi, etc.). Italian literature will be analysed in terms of the most important political and sociological changes.
The practical sessions will introduce students to cognitive and semiotic literary analysis.
Tutorial sessions will train students in academic writing.

Evaluation methods

First session :
cascading examination:

• Submission of a written work (40%). A student who has not submitted a written paper by the beginning of the session and who has not made a presentation during the practical sessions will not be admitted to the exams in session.

• Written exam on the contents of the lecture and the practical exercise: 40%
• Examination on the contents of the course (grammar): 20%.

Second session : 

• Submission of written work (40%). The student who has not submitted a written work by the beginning of the session 
• Written exam on the contents of the lecture and the practical exercises (40%) and on the contents of the monitoring (20%).
• Oral exam: this concerns only those who have not made a presentation during the course. The exam consists in making a PowerPoint presentation on a selected topic.

Other information

This course is taught completely in italian.

Bibliography

Umberto Eco: Cinque scritti morali
Pier Paolo Pasolini: Scritti corsari.
Articles de Leonardo Sciascia
Syllabus d'articles sur Moodle
Une série de films (liste communiquée en classe)
Umberto Saba : Il Canzoniere (TP)

Faculty or entity

ELAL