GERMAN LITERATURE 1

The course is part of the characterising and integrative educational activities of the study course LCSL, and is aimed at first-year students of all curricula. It is the initial phase of knowledge of the literary and cultural heritage of the German language, focusing on Goethe's age at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. In this teaching setting, one begins to develop skills in the thematic and formal analysis of literary texts and understanding of the ways in which they respond to the fundamental questions of their time.

1) a solid knowledge of a few but representative texts of fiction, theatre and poetry in German from the classical-romantic period 2) the ability to understand the specific historical and cultural context in which the works analysed are set; 3) the ability to acquire and apply adequate critical tools in the analysis of the literary text on a thematic and stylistic-formal level; 4) the ability to read and translate a short text in the original language.

There are no particular requirements.

The subject of the course are works by four fundamental writers of the German literary canon, in the context of the late European Enlightenment. The young Goethe, Lessing, Schiller and Kleist all respond to the stimuli of an extraordinary epoch that redesigns the relationship between art, philosophy, history, ethics and society in a modern key, making literature the privileged vehicle for the negotiation of new ideas and anthropological proposals in the nascent bourgeois public sphere in Germany, before and after the French Revolution.

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Nathan il saggio, testo tedesco a fronte, introduzione di E. Bonfatti, traduzione di A. Casalegno, Garzanti, Milano 2003.
Johann Wolfgang Goethe, I dolori del giovane Werther, testo tedesco a fronte, a cura di G. Baioni, note e apparati di Stefania Sbarra, Einaudi, Torino 1998 e ss.
Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Faust e Urfaust, a cura di G.V. Amoretti, testo tedesco a fronte, Feltrinelli, Milano 2014 (solo le pagine relative a Urfaust).
Friedrich Schiller, Intrigo e amore, traduzione di A. Busi, testo tedesco a fronte, Mondadori, Milano 1994.
Heinrich von Kleist, Il terremoto in Cile, a cura di S. Sbarra, Textus, L’Aquila 2020.
A few poems by Goethe (see the moodle platform).

Handbooks:
Ladislao Mittner, Storia della letteratura tedesca, 3 voll., Einaudi, Torino 1974 (alcuni paragrafi segnalati sulla piattaforma moodle).
Marino Freschi (a cura), Storia della civiltà letteraria tedesca, vol. I Dalle origini all’età classico-romantica, UTET. Solo il capitolo di Luca Crescenzi, L’età di Goethe, pp. 361-435.

In the examination, the student will have to demonstrate, by answering specific questions, that he/she 1) knows how to historically and critically contextualise the texts he/she has chosen to prepare for; 2) is able to analyse a text, highlighting its content and formal aspects; 3) knows how to use the critical tools acquired; 4) knows how to read, translate and comment on a passage from the texts analysed during the lessons.

oral

The examination consists of three parts: the presentation of a topic of your choice; the reading and comprehension of a passage analysed in the classroom; and some questions on the course topics. In order to pass the examination, a sufficient mark must be obtained in each of the above three parts, which will be graded with points from 0 to 10 each. Sufficiency, i.e. 6 points, will be obtained with elementary competence and the absence of serious errors, and points 7 to 10 will be obtained on the basis of the breadth of knowledge and the quality of argumentation and exposition.

Lectures in Italian, contextualisation of the individual works covered in the course and in-depth monographs on them, with an invitation to discussion.

Some bibliographic material will be uploaded onto the moodle platform well in advance of the start of the course. Students are invited to obtain books by Lessing, Goethe, Schiller and Kleist in good time, with the exception of Urfaust, which will be made available by the lecturer.

This subject deals with topics related to the macro-area "Human capital, health, education" and contributes to the achievement of one or more goals of U. N. Agenda for Sustainable Development