The course aims to provide a first introduction to the main comparative methodologies, in relation to a specific theme, leading students to experience significant forms of comparing texts from different languages and cultures. A particular attention will be devoted to the morphological dialectic between constants and variations in large/little scales of temporal and cultural relations.
The course consists in a) lectures on historical and critical presentation of some comparative methods and their analytical, historiographical, formalist, stylistic and cultural-oriented categories; b) close-reading of texts belonging to different European literatures and related to the course-theme, in order to apply the comparative methodologies.
Fabulous metamorphosis. Notes on the rewriting of Fairy-Tales genre. From a theoretical point of view, we’ll deal with the classical studies in morphology of the fairy tale and in the theories of rewriting. Forms and themes, models and constant able to define the traditional meaning of the fairy-tale genres will be confronted to their recovery, discounting, mutation, transgression from the Romantic to the modern and contemporary experimentations.
Vladimir Propp, Morphology of the Folktale, Einaudi; Gerard Genette, Palimpseste, Seuil.
Primary texts: Giovan Battista Basile, Lo cunto de li cunti, Garzanti; E.T.A Hoffmann Klein Zaches, genannt Zinnober [ed. it. l’Orma]; Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber, Carmen Gaite, Caperucita in Manhattan; Angelica Liddell, Y como no se ... pudrió Blancanieves; Ljudmila Petrsevskaja, There once lived a Woman, Michael Cunningham, A Wild Swan and Other Tales
NICOLA FERRARI (President)
MARCO SUCCIO
II semester
Oral test, consisting in a critic dialogue with the teacher (length: about three quarters of an hour) to verify the acquisition of methodological skills, by the analysis of texts presented by the candidates.
The evaluation of the test will depend on the mastery of analytical and historiographical methods and on the personal capacity for their application.
