CATALAN LITERATURE 1

“Catalan Literature 1 / Catalan Literature 2 mod. 1” is a core course for students enrolled in any of the three curricula (Literatures and Cultures; Linguistics, Philology and Language Teaching Research; International Politics) of the Bachelor's Degree Programme in Languages, Civilisation and the Science of Language, who have chosen to study Catalan Language and Literature (as language A or language B). The course can also be included in the study plan as a “relative/additional” or “chosen by the student” educational activity. In accordance with the learning outcomes of the Bachelor’s Degree Programme in Languages, Civilisation and the Science of Language, the course will enable students to: deepen their knowledge of contemporary Catalan literature and culture; develop skills in the analysis of film and literary texts, and understand how they relate to their own context. This year topic will be: “Portraits of a city: Barcelona in cinema and literature”.

Regular and active participation in the teaching activities offered by the course (lectures, discussions and, possibly, thematic research seminars) and in independent research activities will enable students to:

- gain a wider knowledge of Barcelona and its history, as well as of the literature and cinema surrounding it, from the end of the nineteenth century to the post-war period;
- acquire a basic knowledge of the history of the contemporary city;
- become acquainted with the key elements of film language;
- use literature and cinema as tools for studying and interpreting the city;
- critically discuss, with appropriate language and argumentative rigour, the main issues related to the cinematic and literary representation of Barcelona;
- develop the ability to independently analyse and interpret films and literary texts.

No previous knowledge is required.

The course aims to explore the cinematic and literary representation of Barcelona in three key stages of its urban development: the great urban expansion at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Spanish Civil War and the post-war period. Through the comparative analysis of a corpus of films and literary texts made by an international group of filmmakers and writers that have portrayed the Catalan capital in the chosen periods, we will study how the image of Barcelona has evolved in relation to the deep urban, cultural and socio-economic changes experienced by the city over time.

Topics
1. The birth of a metropolis: Barcelona between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
1.1 The Pla Cerdà
1.2 Renaixença, Modernisme and Noucentisme
1.3 The foundation of FC Barcelona. Barça as a symbol of identity and political-cultural resistance.
2. The wounded city: Barcelona during the Civil War (1936-1939)
2.1 The Civil War and the anarchist revolution told by writers and directors
2.2 Republican exile and Francoist repression
3. The occupied city: post-war Barcelona

For students attending classes, the study material is limited to the notes taken in class and to the slides that will be made available on the course web page on the University Moodle platform. For non-attending students, instead, the study material consists of the slides of the lessons and of the texts listed in point c).

a) Film

Movimiento revolucionario en Barcelona (Mateo Santos, 1936).
Barcelona trabaja para el frente (Mateo Santos, 1936).
Vida en sombras (Llorenç Llobet Gràcia, 1948)
Las largas vacaciones del 36 (Jaime Camino, 1976)
Land and Freedom (Ken Loach, 1995)
Soldados de Salamina (David Trueba, 2003)
Pa negre ((Agustí Villaronga, 2010)
Barcelona abans que el temps ho esborri (Mireia Ros, 2011)
Incerta glòria (Agustí Villaronga, 2017)

The films will be screened during lessons in original version with subtitles.

b) Selected texts from:

La febre d’or (Narcís Oller, 1892)
L’auca del senyor Esteve (Santiago Rusiñol, 1907)
L’art d’ensenyar Barcelona (Carles Soldevila, 1929)
La plaça del Diamant (Mercè Rodoreda, 1962)
Omaggio alla Catalogna (George Orwell, 1938)
Pàgines de l’exili. Prats de Molló (Pere Calders, 1939)
Incerta glòria (Joan Sales, 1956)
K.L. Reich (Joaquim Amat-Piniella, 1963)
Els vençuts (Xavier Benguerel, 1969)

The selected texts will be made available on the course web page on the University Moodle platform.

c) Other texts

Subirana, Jaume. Construir con palabras. Escritores, literatura e identidad en Cataluña (1859-2019). Madrid: Cátedra, 2018.[book]

Claret, Jaume e Jaume Subirana. “1970, 1925, 2009: whistling in the stadium as a form of protest”. Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies, 21:1 (2015). [article]

The book "Construir con palabras" can be purchased at the Cafoscarina bookstore. The article by Claret and Subirana will be made available on the course web page on the University Moodle platform.

Evaluation will take place through an oral exam in Italian. The oral exam will evaluate:

- the candidate’s ability to present the course contents clearly and consistently using a scientifically appropriate vocabulary;
- the candidate’s ability to make connections.

The evaluation will also take into account active participation in the lessons and cultural activities proposed by the teacher (only for attending students).

ATTENTION: due to the Covid-19 emergency, the oral exam at the end of the second semester (May/June 2020) will take place online.
Please note that this method of evaluation is temporary and will be applied only until the end of the emergency.

Conventional lectures during which students will be required to actively participate. The teacher make extensive use of multimedia materials.

Italian

Although not mandatory, class attendance is recommended.

oral

This subject deals with topics related to the macro-area "Cities, infrastructure and social capital" and contributes to the achievement of one or more goals of U. N. Agenda for Sustainable Development