MODERN COMPARATIVE LITERATURE
cod. 1005642

Academic year 2017/18
2° year of course - First semester
Professor
Academic discipline
Critica letteraria e letterature comparate (L-FIL-LET/14)
Field
Attività formative affini o integrative
Type of training activity
Related/supplementary
30 hours
of face-to-face activities
6 credits
hub:
course unit
in

Integrated course unit module: LITERARY CRITICISM AND COMPARATIVE LITERATURE

Learning objectives

Knowledge and understanding.
The course aims at strengthening the basic knowledge of literary study, opening the way for a specialized field, and promoting the development of original statements about the thematic net described throughout the course itself.
Applying knowledge and understanding.
The study of literary methods, the learning of the genre theories, and finally the comparative approach elicit the development of the capacity to understand and connect literary facts, in a profoundly interdisciplinary perspective.
Making judgements.
By the end of the course students ought to have acquired the capacity to carefully value the complexity of literary text, critically interpreting their structural elements, the morphological similarities and differences between them. They should also have acquired particular intepretive and comparative abilities about the historical and socio-cultural contexts to which those artistic documents belong.
Communication skills.
By the end of the course students should have conceived the capacity to describe literary texts on the basis of the genre theories and supranational literary study, developing a personal, reliable and consistent way of reading.
Learning skills.
The commitment shown in acquiring competences and learning should provide the students with a definite methodological competence as well as with skills aimed at consolidating their set of readings, their capacity to understand and schematize the dynamics of literary facts – all necessary skills in order to organize contents into the written form.

Prerequisites

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Course unit content

Title of the course: States of Bourgeois Life.

Between sociology, nation building, and a study of class relationships and conflicts: the course will pose comparative questions on types, characters and stories from Contemporary Europe. The recent Italian publication of Franco Moretti’s The Bourgeois (2017), makes possible to ascertain the wide if porous structures of ‘bourgeoisie’. We will look at its reflections throughout the era of its replenishment, the second half of the XIXth Century, as well as at its possible forms of survival during the XXth Century. Moreover, a group of selected films will illustrate the identity as well as the intimate contradictions of the bourgeois.

Full programme

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Bibliography

Required readings:

Section A: Critical texts

1. Moretti, The Bourgeois: Between History and Literature, Verso

Section B: Fictional texts and Drama

2. Zola, Il ventre di Parigi, Garzanti
3. Ibsen, Casa di bambola, any edition
4. Forster, Maurice, Garzanti
5. Parise, Il padrone, Adelphi
6. Bassani, L'airone, Feltrinelli

Section C: Films

A. Pasolini, Teorema (1968)
B. Bunuel, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972)
C. Chabrol, La Cérémonie (1995)

Teaching methods

Frontal lessons

Assessment methods and criteria

Oral. A satisfactory exam will demonstrate the capacity to connect and interpret in an accurate way forms and thematic as described throughout the course.

Other information

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