Aims

Students are required to carry out research in the field of Italian literature.

Main themes

After a series of classes introducing a particular subject, students present an initial piece of written work, which is discussed in the course.

Content and teaching methods

Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936) made his mark in several different literary genres: theatre, novels, short stories, and essays. Of these genres, the short story was the one most regularly used by the author: from 1894, the year his first collection, Amori senza amore, was published, until 1936, the year of his death (a posthumous collection, La giornata, was published in 1937). Pirandello gave the title Novelle per un anno (Short Stories for a Year) to the series of collections of both old and new stories that he published after 1922. He intended to offer his readers 365 stories, and reached a figure of well over 200.
Nonetheless, these short stories have not been studied as much as the plays and the novels. Although quite a few studies have now been carried out in this area, they are not systematic: they concentrate on the analysis of a few stories, without usually taking into account either the structure of the collections or the development from one collection to another.
During the seminar students will examine the stories from the years between 1884 and 1902.
The seminar will allow them to become more familiar with the narrative context of the first half of the 20th century and will introduce them to methods of analysing short narratives.

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

Prerequisite: A good knowledge, both active and passive, of Italian.
Evaluation: Students are evaluated on the basis of their active participation in discussion and of their written work, as corrected and revised based on guidelines given during the course by the teacher.

Other credits in programs