FRENCH LITERATURE SP

The course "Urban Spaces, Architecture, Identity" within the course French Literature is placed among the courses characterizing the course of studies of LM: Philology, Linguistics and Italian - European Literature. We will consider some French novels belonging to different historical periods, particularly representative of the issues under consideration, between the nineteenth and the twenty-first century: we will start from the survey of the elements of the semiological phenomenon, narratological and rhetorical applied to the genre of the urban novel, from the point of view of the subject considered "foreign", because linked to immigration or foreign, by choice, compared to the metropolitan French reality. The methodology of speech analysis will also be applied, according to the French school, through the analysis of discursive phenomena, highlighting the social acts and practices of the subjects, in relation to the different historical realities. We will analyze how the "values" are transformed and incarnated in actions and figures, investigating the discursive and narrative levels, and in both cases, considering the syntactic and semantic dimensions.

At the end of the course the student is able to use the methodologies and terminology taken into consideration, being able to perform the analysis of the texts studied and be able to make connections or detect differences, according to their formal components, rhetorical, stylistic and according to the identification of the main discursive aspects. Must demonstrate knowledge of the analyzed texts, mastery of the contents, linguistic accuracy and lexical properties; possess basic knowledge on some general concepts of literature, on the enunciative relationships of the sentence, the lexicon and the discourse as a place of social articulation, on the dynamics of literary communication and the relationship between text and context, in relation to historical and urban realities specific to each novel.

Knowledge of the structure and functioning of the literary text and of the general frameworks (periodizations and literary currents) of the history of literature, in reference to foreign literary productions; general knowledge of the main problems related to the critical approach to the literary text. The prerequisites indicated here are an integral part of the path related to the master’s degree in Italian Philology and Literature.

The proposed novels, between the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries, present subjects within a French urban reality "built", that is, a static system of "distinctions". The following aspects will be considered:
1.the poetics of the novel and the characters that place it in a genre: naturalist novel, novel by French writers and writers of Maghreb origin; novels on non-places in conflict with modern consciousness;
2.The point of view of the character who realizes a way of "framing" the space starting from a certain narrative perspective, dependent on a plurality of dimensions, relative to the positioning of a personal point of view, social, gender; the construction of qualitative differences and therefore "imperative": planting of the subject, as much as user-inhabitant forced to act and move in the real, to define themselves as a resident or traveller, "out of place" or "out of norm"as an intruder or as a native, as a wanderer or as a sedentary, as well as a spectator. The manifestations of modalizations are the embodiment of the impositions due to the ordering of social (or technological) norms rather than a stylistic order;
3.Movements and transformations within places. Places and architectures determine a portion of space, they build a system of differences of distributional and functional sense of the reality of the subjects. The notions of compulsion and value are the basis of any ideological or linguistic system. The dwellings of the characters (palace, families of neighborhoods in the French suburbs, streets, non-places) build a qualitatively "oriented" itinerary, a trajectory of ascent or personal or social decadence. In the attribution of a sense of space, management assumes a role of fundamental mediation, understood as a project not only motor, but also narrative. Narrative programs imply the aims and actions of the subject, a want to do, a want to be, or a know/have/can do or be, set in motion a story, combining skills and performance;
4.The real as a meeting of norms, a system of hierarchical systems of values, of obligations, of constraints that define joints, that involve a main body and "dependencies", enclosed and encompassing spaces. The places and the architecture (city, collective buildings, house, neighborhood, street...), which are emblematic objects of the literary text of the period considered, are equipped with a rich and complex semantic statute: their function in the text is to be discriminatory systems (the dichotomy us/ them, the statute of the foreigner in search of a "third space" identity, desire to de-build polarization, linguistic dis-location)that classify, separate objects and subjects, naturally organize the strategies of the desire of being, according to the axiological modalizations put in place by the protagonists. The space is therefore oriented on the basis of the movements, the programmes and the purposes within which it is deployed;
5.the identity crisis and the feeling of "exile" of the character, "alien" to the environment or coming from the reality of immigration or from the street. The sense that comes from the relationship of each subject with the world and places, starting from its body scheme, is derived from the interaction between the posture and the environment, often as a conflict scenario. Starting from this work of localization, the body scheme will construct the perception of space itself as a system of polarizations to which forms of attribution of semantic values are linked.

NARRATIVE TEXTS
Calixthe Beyala, Petit prince de Belleville, Albin Michel, 1992 (translated passages)
Rachid Boudjedra, Topographie idéale pour une agression caractérisée, Gallimard, 1986 (translated passages)
Mehdi Charef, Il thé nell'harem di Archi Ahmed, (in press)
Mehdi Charef, La casa di Alexina. Storia di un bambino algerino nella Francia del 1960, (trad. P. Salerni), Ediz. Universitarie Romane, 2018
Annie Ernaux, Guarda le luci, amore mio, L'Orma, 2022
Leila Sebbar, Fatima ou les Algériennes au square, Stock, 1981 (translated passages)
Émile Zola, La preda (any edition, in Italian)
Émile Zola, Il ventre di Parigi (any edition, in Italian)

CRITICAL ESSAYAS
Marc Augé, Non-luoghi. Introduzione a un'antropologia della surmodernità, Elèuthera, 2009
Alice Giannitrapani, Introduzione alla semiotica dello spazio, Carocci editore, 2013
Philippe Hamon, Esposizioni. Letteratura e architettura nel XIX secolo, CLUEB, 1994
Christina Horvath, Le Roman urbain contemporain en France, Paris, Presses de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2008
COLLECTIF “QUI FAIT LA FRANCE?” (CHI FA LA FRANCIA?), Cronache di una società annunciata: racconti dalle banlieue, tr. I. Vitali, Viterbo, Stampa alternativa/Nuovi equilibri, 2008
Abdelmalek Sayad, La doppia assenza. Dalle illusioni dell'emigrato alle sofferenze dell'immigrato, D. Borca (Traduttore) R. Kirchmayr (Traduttore), Cortina Raffaello, 2002
Marina Sbisà (a cura di), Gli atti linguistici. Aspetti e problemi di filosofia del linguaggio, Feltrinelli, 1995 (1978)
Leila Sebbar, Paris, géographie de l’exil, Les Temps Modernes, 1980, I, 413 ; janvier 1981, II, 414
Ugo Volli, Manuale di semiotica, u.e.





Other texts will be provided by the teacher during the course

The final learning examination consists of a discussion of about 30 minutes on the topics discussed throughout the course. The student must show his knowledge of the contents and of his acquired skills; know how to use the specialized lexicon related to critical reference studies his ability to analyse the passages treated during the course by applying the methodologies studied; know how to orient themselves independently in secondary literature and know how to critically discuss it; his ability to critically organize the texts even from a linguistic expository point of view, and his historical knowledge of the urban phenomena changes; strengthen the reflective and argumentative skills of the student on the topics addressed in the course.

oral

The course is composed of lectures to attend to, in which an active participation of the students is required, as well as the use of multimedia support (word and power point).

Italian

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