COMPARATIVE LITERATURE

The teaching is part of the basic disciplines of the degree course in Linguistic and Cultural Mediation. The main objective of the course is to provide the tools to relate literatures and cultures of different languages and countries, applying different interpretative methodologies.

1. Knowledge and understanding:
- Knowledge of the cultural and literary aspects of the various geographical areas with particular reference to the Spanish and English-speaking linguistic communities;
- Knowledge of the contemporary history of the countries of the studied languages, through their literature;
- Knowledge of the main intercultural phenomena of different linguistic communities with particular reference to those of Spanish and English speakers.
2. Ability to apply knowledge and understanding:
- Knowing how to establish relations between the culture of the countries and the communities of the two languages of study and their own culture;
- Knowing how to read a literary text to obtain useful information for the knowledge of the history and culture of a country;
- Knowing how to build links between different cultures and different forms of culture.
3. Ability to judge:
- Ability to interpret a literary text in relation to the historical-cultural reality in which the text and the reader have fallen.
4. Communication skills:
- Know how to use a suitable basic vocabulary of literary and historical scope.
5. Learning skills:
- Know how to critically use literary and theoretical texts and relate them;
- Knowing how to insert specific knowledge on a text in a wider knowledge.

There is no prerequisite, if not a good knowledge of Italian.

This course will be a study of the Italian and Italian-American Mafia in its cultural and literary dimension. We will take into account movies, novels, short stories, essays, articles.

Mandatory reading:

- Roberto Dainotto, The Mafia. A Cultural History, London: Reaktion Books, 2015
- Giovanni Verga, Cavalleria rusticana
- Leonardo Sciascia, Il mare color del vino

Partial reading:

- E. J. Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels, New York: Norton & Co., 2010, pp. 13-56
- Francesco Rosi, An Interview, in Film Quarterly, 18, 3, (1965), pp. 50-56
- Moe Nelson, Modernity, Mafia Style: Alberto Lattuada's Il mafioso, in Mafia Movies: A Reader, Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2014, pp. 219-225.
- Carlos Cortes, Italian Americans in Films: from Immigrants to Icons, in Melus, 14, 3-4, 1987, pp. 107-126
- John Barth, The Literature of Exhaustion, from The Friday Book: Essays and Other Non-Fiction. London: The John Hopkins University Press, 1984, pp. 62-76
- Alberto Saviano, Gomorra (primo capitolo)

Not mandatory reading:

- John Dickie, Cosa nostra, London: Random House, 2006

The verification of learning will be based on an oral interview:

1. Knowledge of theoretical and narrative texts. It will be based on the two mandatory texts. One question will be proposed to test the ability to learn and to verify knowledge and understanding of the texts.

Frontal lesson. Seminars on some points considered particularly important and stimulating for the student will be discussed in seminar lessons.

Italian

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