THEORY OF LITERATURE

The course is part of the “basic [di base]” educational activities of the BA program in Language, Civilization and the Science of Language. Its objectives are 1) to help students to develop the ability to read a literary work within a theoretical and historical context, and 2) the study of the methodologies for the analysis of the literary text.

Knowledge and Understanding
1) Knowledge and understanding of the methodologies for the analysis of the literary text
2) Knowledge and understanding of the main literary, artistic, and cultural phenomena of the countries in which the studied languages are spoken
3) Knowledge and understanding of the historical and cultural evolutionary processes of the countries in which the studied languages are spoken

Applying Knowledge and Understanding
1) Ability to situate a literary work in its context
2) Ability to apply methodologies to the analysis of the society and culture that produced the literary work under examination
3) Ability to read a literary text and comment on it with the correct terminology and scientific methodology
4) Ability to handle historical sources within the framework of an accurate critical contextualization, and in relation to different cultures caught in their specific developments
5) Ability to start autonomously in-depth analyses of particular case studies connected to the subject of the final thesis

Making Judgments
1) Ability to develop intellectual independence with regard to the topics covered in the lectures

Communication Skills
1) Ability to communicate orally and effectively the knowledge acquired using the correct terminology
2) Ability to interact with peers and the teacher in a critical and respectful way both in person and in the virtual classroom

Learning Skills
1) Ability to navigate critically the required readings and the bibliography they provide

The course has no specific prerequisites.

Theory of the Novel
The course will ponder on the historical and philosophical meaning of the novel, while retracing some of the most important developments of the theoretical debate on it from the early years of the twentieth century to our days. Moreover, through the analysis of Honoré de Balzac's "Père Goriot" and Fyodor Dostoevsky’s "The Idiot," we will engage concretely in reading a novel in a way that is both theoretically and historically oriented.

Balzac, Honoré de. Père Goriot. 1834-1835. Trans. A. J. Krailsheimer. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Dostoevsky, Fyodor. The Idiot. 1869. Trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. Intro. Richard Pevear. New York: Vintage, 2003.

Lukács, Georg. The Theory of the Novel: A Historico-philosophical Essay on the Forms of the Great Epic Literature. 1914-1915. Trans. Anna Bostock. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1971. (Part One)
Bakhtin , Mikhail. “Epic and Novel: Toward a Methodology for the Study of the Novel” (1937-1941). The Dialogic Imagination. Ed. Michael Holquist. Trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981. 3-40.
Fusillo, Massimo. “Epic, Novel.” 2002. Trans. Michael F. Moore. The Novel. Ed. Franco Moretti. Vol. 2. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006. 32-63.
Mazzoni, Guido. Theory of the Novel. 2011. Trans. Zakiya Hanafi. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017. (Introduction and Chapters 1, 5, 6, 7)
Pavel, Thomas. The Lives of the Novel: A History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013. (Introduction, and Parts Two and Three)

Non-attending students [non frequentanti] will also read the following essay:
Brugnolo, Stefano, Davide Colussi, Sergio Zatti, and Emanuele Zinato. La scrittura e il mondo: Teorie letterarie del Novecento. Rome: Carocci, 2016.

Learning will be verified by means of an oral examination.

1) Frontal lectures
2) Online sharing of course materials
3) In-class and online discussion

Italian

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