TEXT ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION

The module is part of the Master's Degree Course in EUROPEAN, AMERICAN AND POSTCOLONIAL LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES - LITERATURES AND CULTURES as a characterising course (with 30 hours of lectures and 6 CFU) and shares the objectives described above, declining them, in this specific case, for the area of analysis and interpretation of German literature texts.

The course aims to initiate students into an in-depth reading and comprehension of texts of particular significance for German culture and into the analysis of various critical theories and literary methodologies with a view to the elaboration of appropriate interpretative approaches to the literary text.

In coherence with the objective of initiating students into advanced linguistic knowledge and analytical and interpretative skills at a specialised level, the course will be held in German with comments and concise explanations in Italian where these are needed or requested by the participants.

The course is also open to students who wish to take it for free-choice or supernumerary credits and to Erasmus students who meet the required prerequisites.

Knowledge and understanding:

1) acquisition of tools and strategies for reading and analysing literary texts;

2) in-depth knowledge of the main methodologies of critical approaches to the text;

3) developed awareness of the plurality of critical approaches to the text;

4) acquisition of intercultural notions and awareness from a comparative perspective;


Ability to apply knowledge and understanding:

1) ability to critically approach a text, tracing it back to the historical-critical context of reference and applying the most suitable critical methodologies;

2) ability to analyse some particularly difficult texts of German literature;

3) ability to master the tools of intertextual criticism;

4) refinement of the ability to apply the critical tools acquired in the analysis of the proposed texts, thematically, stylistically and formally;

Judgement skills:

Improved ability to evaluate competing interpretative approaches and to make independent hypotheses and judgements in a relevant manner;

Communication skills:

1) to be able to communicate effectively in oral form the knowledge acquired using appropriate terminology;

2) to be able to sustain a critical scientific debate at a high level;

Learning skills

1) On the basis of such knowledge, skills and abilities, it will thus be possible to acquire an effective awareness of the functioning and structure of a literary text and the direct ability to identify the junctures and critical mechanisms functional to its critical-interpretative reading.

There are no prerequisites.

Franz Kafka

Through the detailed analysis of the main methods of hermeneutic approach to the literary text, the aim is to provide an overall picture of the different reading strategies and methods of analysing the literary text. By elaborating models of structuring critical discourse on the content and formal level and identifying the semantic, stylistic and formal dimensions of literary writing, it will be possible to acquire a specific competence in the active analysis of the text, starting from the understanding of its constituent joints and its dynamic structure to the consideration of its functions and effects.
This will be achieved through the overall analysis and the study of translation of a number of Kafka's texts. In particular, the 14 short stories from the collection Ein Landarzt and the other stories published during the author's lifetime will be considered against the backdrop of the international critical debate that has characterised the reception of Kafka's fiction since the 1930s. Particular attention will be paid to the dynamics of the realisation of the completed work, starting with an analysis of the surviving manuscripts, the variants they bear witness to, the intertextual and intermedial relations found in the individual texts, and the structural constants of the narratives under analysis.

Franz Kafka, Drucke zu Lebzeiten, in: Kritische Ausgabe. Schriften – Tagebücher – Briefe. Hrsg. Hans-Gerd Koch, Wolf Kittler und Gerhard Neumann. S Fischer, Frankfurt 1994.

Critical Literature A (a choice of two texts from the following):

Oliver Jahraus, Kafka: Leben, Schreiben, Machtapparate, Reclam, Stuttgart 2002;
Oliver Jahraus – Stefan Neuhaus (Hrsg.), Kafkas «Urteil» und die Literaturtheorie: Zehn Modellanalysen, Reclam, Stuttgart 2002;
Monika Schmitz-Emanns, Kafka. Epoche – Werk – Wirkung, München, Beck 2011;
Gerhard Neumann, Kafka-Lektüren, de Gruyter, Berlin-Boston 2013;
Mathias Mayer, Franz Kafkas Litotes, Wilhelm Fink, Paderborn 2015;
Luca Crescenzi, L’esploratore e la fine del tempo.Franz Kafka e il ciclo di racconti
«Un medico di campagna», Edizioni Studi Germanici, Roma 2023

Critical Literature B (a choice of one text from the following):

Burkhard Moennighoff, Eckhardt Meyer-Krentler, Arbeitstechniken Literaturwissenschaft. UTB, Paderborn 2019 (19^ edizione)
Emilio Russo (a cura di), Il testo letterario, Carocci, Roma 2021 (2^ edizione)
Francesco Muzzioli, Le teorie della critica letteraria, Carocci, Roma 2023 (3^ edizione)

Learning assessment methods: the assessment of learning and knowledge will take place through an oral exam.

Lectures and seminar exercises

Italian

oral