COMPARATIVE LITERATURE

Title of the monographic course : Think and Write a Fantasy story. The subversive power of imagination through the antiquity and the medieval culture to present itself became
in the modern era an aesthetically ambiguous function and a fantasy story formula. The teacher reconstructs the semantic history of the fantastic and it traces the historical stages of affirmation as a genre,as a way to compete with literary realism and as an alternative to it; the great interaction with the demands of the theory and the study of myths, recurring themes and motifs, and the centrality of strong emotional situations and transgressive, ultimately determine the identification of new narrative models.

The course aims at introducing first year students to fantastic literature providing a survey centered on the chronological evolution of the main formal choices of European and American writers. Students are expected to: 1.recognize the basic narrative situations (from Gothic to Science Fiction) characterizing fantasy in nineteenth and twentieth century literature and the possible variants of the following postmodernist period; 2. recognize the basic fantastic narrative situations and the ingredients that characterize them in texts they have not yet seen; 3. employ the appropriate vocabulary to describe the correlation between narrative choices and thematic issues; 4. recognize the development of literary history trough concepts of criticism. These basic skills concerning the functioning of fantastic narratives and the development of Occidental literature constitute the necessary foundations to proceed in literary-cultural curriculum.

None. There is no prerequisite: it's enough a good knowledge of Italian.

History and literary theory of fantasy provide tools for writing workshops narrative. During the lessons will be enumerated processes behind the cognitive experience of a fantastic story.

Alessandro Scarsella, Del mondo, fuori. Ricerca del fantastico. Per la storia di un'idea letteraria, Venezia, Amos, 2016 (ISBN 9788887670509).
The specific pages of the texts will be indicated by the teacher. Appropriate secondary reading may be suggested during the course.

Optional written test; individual exercises of applying knowledge and textual understanding. The oral exam will be a conversation centered on indicated authors and texts, which will be analyzed, commented and contextualized by the student.

Lectures; programmed participation of students with brief interventions in
which they’ll have to demonstrate communicative skills.

Appropriate secondary reading may be suggested during the course.

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