COMPARATIVE LITERATURE

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

Knowledge and Understanding
1) Knowledge and understanding of the methodologies for the comparative analysis of literature
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 the methodologies for the analysis of the understanding 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 treat historical sources in a framework of correct critical contextualization, and in relation to the different cultures in their specific historical developments
5) Ability to start autonomously in-depth analyses of specific cases connected to the object of the 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 by using the correct terminology
2) Ability to interact with peers and the teacher in a critical and respectful way both in person and on the forum of the virtual classroom

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

The course has no specific prerequisites.

The Tragic and the Novel between the 19th and the 20th century. At the beginning of the 1960s, George Steiner declared the death of tragedy, controversially bringing back an old refrain of idealist and post-idealist philosophy about the impossibility of the tragic in the modern world. In contrast with the mournful evaluations of philosophy, the developments of the European and American novel between the 19th and the 20th century have often told a different story. The universal and absolute dimension of the tragic has not always been perceived, indeed, as something radically incompatible with the private and relative character of the modern novel. The evidence of this is the substantial number of tragic novels written between the second half of the 19th and the early 20th century. We will focus on three of them—Dostoevsky’s The Idiot, Hardy’s Jude the Obscure, and Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury—, in the attempt to reconstruct the times, modes, and meaning of the dialogue between the tragic and the novel at the moment when, in the history of the novel, the transition from 19th-century realism to modernist experimentation was taking place.

Dostoevsky, Fyodor. The Idiot. 1869. Trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. Intro. Richard Pevear. New York: Vintage, 2003.
Hardy, Thomas. Jude the Obscure. 1895. Ed., intro., and nn. Dennis Taylor. London: Penguin, 1998.
Faulkner, William. The Sound and the Fury: The Corrected Text. 1929. New York: Vintage, 1990.

De Cristofaro, Francesco (ed.). Letterature comparate. Rome: Carocci, 2014.
Gentili, Carlo and Gianluca Garelli. Il tragico. Bologna: Il Mulino, 2010.

Non-attending students [non frequentanti] will also read one essay of their choice taken from the following list:
Fusillo, Massimo. Estetica della letteratura. Bologna: Il Mulino, 2009.
Ercolino, Stefano. The Novel-Essay, 1884-1947. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

Learning will be verified by means of an oral examination.

1) Frontal lectures
2) In-class and online discussion

Italian

oral

This subject deals with topics related to the macro-area "Poverty and inequalities" and contributes to the achievement of one or more goals of U. N. Agenda for Sustainable Development