2006-2007 Graduate Courses in Italian
| AUTUMN | WINTER | SPRING |
|---|---|---|
| 30400 Corso di perfezionamento | 30400 Corso di perfezionamento | 30800 MA Survey II. Letteratura italiana dal Cinquecento al Seicento |
| 30900 M.A. Survey III. Letteratura italiana dal Cinquecento al Seicento | 30700 MA Survey I. Letteratura Italiana dal Duecento al Quattrocento | 32101 Dante's Comedy 3: Paradiso |
| 32401 Ugo Foscolo: Neoclassical Tradition & Romantic Imagination | 34400 Il Poema Epico-Cavalleresco: Ariosto | 33502 Boccaccio's Decameron |
| 38400 Pasolini | 34701 Venetian Women Writers and the 'Woman Question,' 1575-1675 | 42100 Readings and Research |
| 38701 Italian Literary Language: Features & History | 35400 Il Scicento | |
| 39100 Creative Couples & Collaboration in 20th Century Italy | 38501 Gianni Celati: Writings and Films from 1970 to Today | |
| 42100 Readings and Research | 42100 Readings and Research |
Graduate Course Descriptions
30400. Corso di perfezionamento. The goal of this course is to help students achieve mastery of composition and style through the acquisition of numerous writing techniques. Using a variety of literary and nonliterary texts as models, students examine the linguistic structure and organization of several types of written Italian discourse and are guided in the acquisition of the rules underlying each discourse type. Staff. Autumn, Winter.
30700. M.A. Survey I. Letteratura Italian Dal Duecento al Quattrocento. An introduction to Italian literature of the Middle Ages and early Renaissance. We will read works by three of the greatest figures of Italian literature?Dante, Petrarca, Boccaccio?as well as a number of other important authors of the medieval period. The literary genres examined will be primarily lyric and narrative poetry and the short story (the Italian novella) . There will be equal emphasis placed on the formal, metrical, and technical aspects of reading early Italian literature as well as the vibrant social, political, and material contexts in which these texts were produced, circulated, and read. J. Steinberg. Autumn.
30800. Survey II. Letteratura italiana dal Cinquecento al Seicento. This course is the continuation of ITAL 207/00 and is devoted to the literature of the Renaissance and Baroque periods. We study various literary genres, primarily dialogues, treatises, drama, lyric and narrative poetry. Staff. Winter.
30900. Survey III. Letteratura italiana dal Settecento ad oggi. An introduction to the major works of Italian literature from the eighteenth century to the present. The genres studied will be primarily lyric poetry, narrative prose, and drama. We consider also the birth and development of Italian cinema and creative and critical trends in today's increasingly multicultural Italy. Staff. Spring.
32101. Dante's Divine Comedy 3: Paradiso. An indepth study of the third cantica of Dante's masterpiece, considered the most difficult but in many ways also the most innovative. Read alongside his scientific treatise the Convivio and his political manifesto the Monarchia. Completion of the previous courses in the sequence not required, but students should familiarize themselves with the Inferno and the Purgatorio before the first day of class. Taught in English. J. Steinberg. Spring.
32401. Ugo Foscolo: Neoclassical Tradition and Romantic Imagination. The course will consider the main works of the writer, taking into account the individual military career of Foscolo in Napoleonic Italy, and his mixed feelings towards Napoleon and the new idea of Italy as a partially unified and independent country. The novel "Le ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis" will be discussed, and a close reading of some sonetts, "odi" and "Sepolcri" will be offered in class. Also the English years of Foscolo will be presented, in a comparative analysis of contemporary literary activity of Lord Byron in Italy. F. Bruni. Autumn.
33502. "Boccaccio's Decameron". Bocaccio's Decameron, written in the midst of the social disruption caused by the Black Death (1348), may have held readers attention for centuries because of its bawdiness, but it is also a profound exploration into the basis of faith and the meaning of death, the status of language, the construction of social hierarchy and social order, and the nature of crisis and historical change. Framed by a story telling contest between seven young ladies and three young men who have left the city to avoid the plague, the one hundred stories of the Decameron form a structural masterpiece that anticipates the Renaissance epics, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and the modern short story. Taught in English. J. Steinberg. Spring.
34400. Il poema epico-cavalleresco: Aristo. PQ: Ital 203 or consent of instructor. A study of chilvalric romance and of Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando furioso, the unrivaled masterpiece of the genre in Italy. We will discuss the poem's famous precursor, M. M. Boiardo's Orlando innamorato, its continuations and remaniements (riscritture), and theoretical treatments of the genre and interpretations of the poem in sixteenth-century Italy and today. There will be a term paper. Classes will be conducted in Italian; concentrators will do all work in Italian. E. Weaver. Winter.
34701. Venetian Women Writers and the 'Woman Question,' 1575-1675. Feminism in Italy began in Venice in the mid-sixteenth century. The earliest texts belong to the literature of the debate known today as the Querelle des femmes and are little more than defenses of women against traditional misogynist accusations. As women writers began to publish more frequently and joined the debate, the issues were no longer simply literary, and writers argued for the education of women, their freedom to choose their vocations, and their participation in public life. We will read the principal contributions to this early feminist movement: Moderata Fonte's Il merito delle donne (The Worth of Women), Lucrezia Marinell's La nobiltà ed eccellenza delle donne ... e i difetti degli uomini (The Nobility and Excellence of Women...and the Defects of Men), and Arcangela Tarabotti's La semplicità (or Tirannia paterna, Paternal Tyranny), as well as minor works by these three Venetian writers. The course will be taught in English with readings in English or Italian. There will be class presentations and a term paper. For credit toward a major or minor in Italian, students must do the readings and paper in Italian, and I will schedule some special sessions for them in which we discuss the texts in Italian. E. Weaver. Winter.
35400. Il Seicento. Questo corso intende esaminare la visione culturale, retorica e religiosa del secolo diciassettesimo attraverso l'esame di una serie di testi chiave, la maggior parte di essi presenti nella "Reading List" dell'esame di Ph. D. Per una comprensione delle fondamenta storiche del seicento, inizieremo con una selezione dall'Istoria del Concilio di Trento di Paolo Sarpi. Proseguiremo con il Cannocchiale aristotelico di Emmanuele Tesauro, trattato essenziale per la comprensione della retorica secentesca. Applicheremo le teorie sulla metafora di Tesauro ad una ampia selezione di poeti barocchi, inclusi Marino e Casoni. Il concetto d'identità barocca ci verrà offerta dallo studio della Dissimulazione onesta di Torquato Accetto e dall'Uomo di lettere di Daniello Bartoli. Concluderemo con una lettura selezionata de Lo cunto de li cunti di Giovan Battista Basile. Il corso sarà condotto in italiano nel dipartimento di Special Collections della Regenstein Library. The course will be conducted in Italian. A. Maggi. Winter.
38400. Pasolini. This course examines each aspect of Pasolini's artistic production according to the most recent literary and cultural theories, including Gender Studies. We shall analyze his poetry (in particular "Le Ceneri di Gramsci" and "Poesie informa di rosa"), some of his novels ("Ragazzi di vita," "Una vita violenta," "Teorema," "Petrolio"), and his numerous essays on the relationship between standard Italian and dialects, semiotics and cinema, and the role of intellectuals in contemporary Western culture. We shall also discuss the following films: "Accattone," "La ricotta," "Edipo Re," "Teorema," and "Salo." A. Maggi. Autumn.
38501. Gianni Celati: Writings and Films from 1970 to Today. Celati has attained the stature of one of the most original and accomplished living contributors to the Italian cultural and literary scene. In studying his work as a fiction writer, an essayist, a translator, and a filmmaker, we shall follow a trajectory through the broader theoretical and literary directions and debates from the neo-avantgarde of the 1960s and early 1970s, to postmodernism, post-colonialism, and other recent developments in literature and critical-theoretical work. Celati has been involved in all of these currents, and his work provides a map through the complex Italian literary terrain of the last three decades and more. We shall also study his mentors, such as Calvino and photographer Luigi Ghirri, and his "compagni di strada" and those younger writers whom he influenced, such as Messori, Cavazzoni, Benati, and other figures identified with the "Po Valley" school of writing. Readings and class discussions in Italian. R. West. Winter.
38701. Italian Literary Language: Features and History. The Course aims to make students familiar with language, style and textual modes of Italian Literature, from the XIVth to the XIXth Century. The relations of vulgar literature and Latin culture, the two way influence of Florentine-Tuscan variety and dialects, the emergence of an Italian literature in the XVIth Century from the Tuscan classics of the XIVth (Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio) are the main subjects which will be examined. Why modern Italian is closer to the XIVth Century than to XVIth language? The reasons of this unexpected situation are to be found in this section of literary language development. A second, substantial transformation takes place in the XIXth Cenntury. The Romantic Age, in fact, and the origin of the Italian novel, requires a new language, devoted to represent the daily language: narrative prose can represent linguistic features of the common Italian language that the scientific analysis of experts in linguistics will focus on much later, in the XXth Century. A selection of texts will be examined, in order to connect general approach and particular textual readings. Students should study this book: F. Bruni, L'italiano letterario nella storia, Il Mulino, 2003. F. Bruni. Autumn.
39100. Creative Couples and Collaboration in Twentieth-Century Italy. Taught in Italian and with readings in Italian, the course concentrates on forms of literary and cinematic collaboration in twentieth-century Italy, as seen in the work of couples, both normative and eccentric, and of groups. We shall study the art of married couples such as Moravia and Morante; of "masters and protégés" Marta Abba and Pirandello, Vittorini and Calvino, and Montale and Spaziani; of friends such as Manganelli and Niccolai, and the Alì Babà; of co-writers such as Fruttero and Lucentini, immigrant writers and their Italian editors, and the Wu Ming; and of creative collaborations between artists working in different media such as Guerra ( writer and scriptwriter) and Antonioni (film director), Masina (actress) and Fellini (film director), and Celati (writer) and Ghirri (photographer), The question of "individual genius" vs. "collaborative creativity" will provide a fundamental theoretical focus for the entire course. R. West. Autumn.
42100. Readings and Research. Staff. Autumn, Winter, Spring.