Aims

Acquaints students with the difficulties faced by writers in the aesthetic, narrative, or fictional treatment of certain particularly traumatic experiences, such as the Second World War and the experience of the camps. The role of fiction in the description of reality and in the transmission of memory is considered.

Main themes

Analysis of representative texts by key 20th-century authors (especially of the second half of the century), highlighting the difficulties encountered in the aesthetic treatment of experiences presented as "unimaginable", "unspeakable", and "incommunicable".

Other information (prerequisite, evaluation (assessment methods), course materials recommended readings, ...)

Evaluation: personal reading by students is encouraged, in order to flesh out their understanding and to be able to back up their arguments during the examination. This is in written form (a question to be explored and discussed with reference to examples come across during the course and drawn from personal reading).

Other credits in programs