OVERVIEW

Writers should open the ways of access between men. ( …) Only Metamorphosis, taken in the most radical meaning (…), enable to feel what a (wo)man is beyond her/his words, to grasp the true substance of a living being. (…) Pity demands concrete metamorphosis in every single living and existing being. In the myth and in the literary works that are handed down to us, those who write learn and practice Metamorphosis (…) our human instrument not to leave humanity at the mercy of death. Elias Canetti

AIMS AND CONTENT

LEARNING OUTCOMES

The main purpose of the discipline is to lead female students and students to reflect critically on the intertextual practices of transposition of the literary text into other media (musical, visual, scenic and cinematographic), identifying and comparing different transformative processes, which allow content and narrative forms to migrate in different sign systems; establishing and testing the possible equivalence relations and the conditions of translatability e transferability between different semiotic contexts. The analysis of cases of intersemiotic translation (adaptations, reworkings, rewritings), particularly significant from a historical, aesthetic, or interpretative, it allows us to verify the strength and usefulness of the majority pregnant theoretical models developed to question this phenomenon, define it, classify it and think about it in its complexity. Following i sinuous experimental paths of these wandering narratives, yes study how much and how the semantic, morphological, stylistic aspects linguistic and linguistic aspects of the literary text are redefined and remodeled at the same time that they redefine and reshape the media that support them they welcome.

AIMS AND LEARNING OUTCOMES

At the end of the course students will be able to

• know and reciprocally compare the main theoretical concepts regarding intertextuality and intermediality

• apply the different theoretical positions to the concrete practice of concrete intersemiotic translation cases analysis, knowing how to evaluate the congruence of theoretical choice, in relation to the class of texts to which it is decided to apply 

• critically master the theoretical categories for intertexuality amalysis, increasing abilities for abstract reflection and argumentative skills, sensitive to contexts

• demonstrate the historical awareness of the different theoretical positions and the ability to conceive their possible interpretative function ​​ relatively to contemporary literary phenomena

PREREQUISITES

The theoretical characterization of the discipline engages a dialogue with the course of Comparative Literature, developing and deepening, its aformative objectives, according to a different and more specific methodological perspective.

TEACHING METHODS

In its 60 hours of lessons, the course will provide for a close and continuous interconnection between frontal lessons (presenting analytical methodologies and synoptic historiographic frameworks) and participatory activity of students (collectively discussing  theoretical models, and analysing literary, musical and cinematographical texts in their intersemiotic relations). Active participation in lessons is therefore very important for the full achievement of the learning objectives.

SYLLABUS/CONTENT

The Transparent World. George Gordon Byron (1788-18249 and European Culture.

Goethe claimed that Byron was a poet of the same greatness as Shakespeare, he imagined him as a burning bush reducing to ashes the sacred cedars of Lebanon (every great work he measured with), he identified Byron with the Poetry itself, transfiguring his figure, in the tragic character of Euphorion, son of Faust and Helen of Troy. Following Goethe, all Europe in the 19th Century  fell folly in love with the hyper-romantic figure of Byron, with his modernly fluid sexuality, his existential incontinence and his absolute creative grace. Byron, the hero, was adopted as the fictional protagonist of countless narratives. His work was continually rewrited, assuming many of his verses and pages as a shared memory of the epoch, and finally translated into painting, music, melodrama.

The course will analyze the relationship between Byron and his predecessors (his recovery of the literary myths of Don Giovanni and Faust), the ways in which his biographical adventure was fictionalized (from Polidori to Stoppard), the transformations of his work into pictorial images (Gericault, Turner, Delacroix) and musical scores, both instrumental (Liszt, Berlioz), vocal (Loewe, Schönberg) and theatrical (Donizetti, Verdi). As a summa of all this cultural Byronesque re-appropriation we will consider the late twentieth-century visionary experimentation of Carmelo Bene on Manfred.

RECOMMENDED READING/BIBLIOGRAPHY

The bibliography, indicative of the critical and literary texts to be analyzed in the course, will be integrated in relation to the participating students’ interests. 

1. General handbooks on intertexuality/intermediality 

[to have a general idea of the conceptual contexts for intertextuality theories:

Laura Neri, Giuseppe Carrara, Teoria della letteratura. Campi, problemi, strumenti, Carocci 2022 or Stefania Sini, Franca Sinopoli, Percorsi di teoria e comparatistica letteraria, Pearson 2021 ]

Gerard Genette, Palimpstes, Seuil [Palinsesti, Einaudi 1997]

Lubomir Dolezel, Heterocosmica, [Bompiani 1999]

2. Theoretical and Critical Texts

Harold Bloom, Lord Byron’s Don Juan, Chelsea House Pub 1987

Harold Bloom, The Anatomy of Influence, Yale University Press, 1992 

Jerom McGann, Byron and Romanticism, Cambridge University Press, 2002

Bernard Beatty, Reading Byron: Poems Life Politics, Liverpool University Press, 2025

Richard Cardwell, The Reception of Byron in Europe, Bloomsbury Academic, 2014

 3. Texts:  

George Gordon Byron, Don Juan, Penguin 2025

George Gordon Byron, Selected Poems, Penguin 2006

W. Goethe Faust II [trad. Franco Fortini, Mondadori 2016]

Hector Berlioz, Harolde en Italie, Eulenburg

Gaetano Donizetti, Parisina, Marino Foliero, Ricordi

Giuseppe Verdi, I due Foscari; Il Corsaro, Ricordi

Arnold Schönberg, Ode to Napoleon, Universal

Frederic Prokosh The Missolonghi Manuscript, 1968 [ed. it. Il manoscritto di Missolungi, trad. di L. Savoia, Adelphi 1989]

Tom Stoppard Arcadia, 1993 [ed. it. trad. di A. Serra, Einaudi 2003

Carmelo Bene, Manfred, Luca Sossella 2012

TEACHERS AND EXAM BOARD

LESSONS

LESSONS START

Lessons will begin in the first semester.

Class schedule

The timetable for this course is available here: Portale EasyAcademy

EXAMS

EXAM DESCRIPTION

The exam consists of a written (a) and an oral (b) part.

(a) redaction of an essay of a length appropriate to the chosen topic, previously agreed and discussed with the teacher, presented in its final form at least one week before the exam. In the paper, one of the methodological approaches addressed during the course must be applied, in a critical and personal way, to detect, describe and interpret a case of intertextual (for the 6 credits) or intermedial  (for the 9 credits) elaboration of  the texts chosen in agreement with the teacher. It will be possible to define different presentation / argumentative methods connected to specific students’ professional training interests (educational projects, journalistic reviews, editorial materials, ...)

(b) critically discussion of the written paper, placing the adopted  intertextual methodology in the context of the main literary theories of the twentieth century (explored with the help of one of the manuals indicated in section 1 of the Bibliography).

ASSESSMENT METHODS

The evaluation of the paper (a) will consider:

• the terminological property of the analysis [elocutio]

• the understanding of the critical model and the ability to personal re-elaboration of the studied contents [inventio]

• the reflection on the formal organization [dispositio] in the presentation of the research results

• the effectiveness of the analytical model application n to the text reading

The evaluation of the oral discussion (b) will consider:

• the general knowledge of the discipline contents o

• the degree of the contents’ personal critical re-elaboration

• the ability for abstract reflection and argumentative ability, sensitive to the contexts of discourse

• the awareness of the essential historical relationships between texts and theories

FURTHER INFORMATION

Non attending students should contact the teacher  in order to define a personal program related to her/his interests and curriculum. There is no extra-bibliography for non attending students.  

Erasmus students not proficient in Italian may request a substitutive bibliography, and take the examination in English (or in other European languages as Spanish or French).