AIMS AND CONTENT

LEARNING OUTCOMES

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.

TEACHING METHODS

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.

SYLLABUS/CONTENT

The Menippean Satire. Theories, paradigms and narrative model of a digressive-narrative genre in European Literature.

RECOMMENDED READING/BIBLIOGRAPHY

Theoretical and Critical Texts

M. Bachtin, Dostoevskij;  N. Frye, Anatomy of Criticism

Fictional Texts:  

Luciano, Dialogues, Petronio, Satyricon [E. Sanguineti, Il gioco del Satyricon], François Rabelais, Gargantua, Francisco de Quevedo, Sueños, Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, Johnathan Swift, A tale of a Tub, Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy, Denis Diderot, Jacques le Fataliste, Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, Alberto Arbasino, Fratelli d’Italia

TEACHERS AND EXAM BOARD

Exam Board

NICOLA FERRARI (President)

DUCCIO TONGIORGI

STEFANO FERNANDO VERDINO

LESSONS

LESSONS START

II semester

Class schedule

COMPARATIVE LITERATURE

EXAMS

EXAM DESCRIPTION

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.

ASSESSMENT METHODS

The evaluation of the test will depend on the mastery of analytical and historiographical methods and on the personal capacity for their application.

Exam schedule