THEORY OF LITERATURE
cod. 05662

Academic year 2019/20
3° year of course - Second 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: PARMA
course unit
in ITALIAN

Learning objectives

Knowledge and understanding.
The course will provide the students with a basic understanding of the rhetorical, thematic and ideological structures of fictional texts.
Applying knowledge and understanding.
By providing a constant guide to the activity of reading, and showing a specific interest in the single points of view, as expressed by the rewritings, the course aims at generating a peculiar consciousness of the way both characters and narrators voice one’s own vision of literature and of the world. Students should be able to apply their knowledge and interpretive skills to a wider set of texts and artistic genres, developing a learned and critical readership, or spectatorship.
Making judgements.
By the end of the course, students should be able to apply their judgements to a theoretically grounded level of textual reading. They should also be able to show the capacity to correctly situating the texts in the epoch and cultural atmosphere which gave them life. Students will interpret them in a critically founded way, paying attention to narrative devices, themes, genres, poetics, as consistently employed by their authors.
Communication skills.
By the end of the course, students ought to show the capacity to master the expression of textual contents, knowing how to point out and communicate the identifying and connecting elements which run across a defined series of literary texts.
Learning skills.
Trained to read texts which belong to a cultural tradition, students should develop critical skills, in order to successfully study the contemporary literary panorama. They should also improve their judgement abilities about what they have learnt (literary-historical knowledge) in order to structure their final dissertation, as well as to prepare themselves to the reading abilities required by the second cycle of studies.

Prerequisites

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Course unit content

Of chalk and tar. Schoolteachers (and pupils) in contemporary literature

The course aims to take into account the schoolteacher, seen at the confluence of character, genre and thematic issues. Remaining the same as the surrounding society changes, the teacher finds refuge in neurosis, or overtly embraces madness; or, at any rate, displays a growing contrast between his/her public figure and his/her private space.

Full programme

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Bibliography

1a. Federico Bertoni, Letteratura. Teorie, metodi, strumenti, Carocci 2018 – only for students in Lettere
1b. Franco Brioschi, Costanzo Di Girolamo, Massimo Fusillo, Introduzione alla letteratura, nuova edizione, Carocci 2013 (ch. 3 excluded) – only for students in Civiltà e lingue straniere moderne
2. Charlotte Brontë, Il professore, Fazi
3. Mann, Il professor Unrat (L’angelo azzurro), Mondadori
4. Spark, I giorni fulgenti di Miss Brodie, Adelphi
5. Mastronardi, Il maestro di Vigevano, Einaudi
6. Onofri, Registro di classe, Minimum fax

Teaching methods

Mainly, frontal lessons

Assessment methods and criteria

Oral examination

Other information

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