OVERVIEW

The course is part of the Basic Learning Activities for the Bachelor degree course of Letters and Humanities (curriculum Music and Performance) and bestows 9 credits, corresponding to 60 hours of classroom teaching and about 165 hours reserved for personal study. It introduces the student to the study of major authors, most significant works, main poetics, and most relevant cultural movements of Italian Literature history.

AIMS AND CONTENT

LEARNING OUTCOMES

The course's aim is to deepen the discipline's historiographical lines, from its origins up to the end of the 19th century, providing a method of reading and critical interpretation of texts which pays particular attention to thematic, stylistic and metrical elements. The specific subject of the course is the Italian poetic text, analysed within the tradition of literary genres, authorial poetics and historical, artistic and cultural contexts. The course is preparatory to the teaching of the discipline in all educational contexts.

AIMS AND LEARNING OUTCOMES

At the end of the course, students will be able to:

- recognize and present the most important moments of the Italian literary tradition, from the 13th to the 19th century

- identify genres in poetry and prose, the main metrical types and the rhetorical strategies of texts

- demonstrate the ability to perform accurate paraphrasing and mature commentary of texts in verse and prose, in oral and written form

- use the terminology of literary criticism appropriately

- present and discuss the topics covered in oral and written form, with clarity and propriety of language.

Furthermore, students will also acquire the following transversal skills

- functional literacy, communicating effectively in oral and written form, with contextual awareness and the ability to use books and digital media

- learning-to-learn skills, organising and evaluating their own learning.

PREREQUISITES

Basic knowledge (at high school level) of the history of Italian literature; good level of comprehension of written and oral Italian; motivation towards the subject.

TEACHING METHODS

Teaching methods include frontal lessons with the aid of multimedia tools and materials; group activities, also in flipped classroom mode; self-assessment activities through tests prepared on AulaWeb. For the study of the manual and the cantos of Dante's Commedia, additional optional (but strongly recommended) workshops will be provided.

The instructor also makes available to students, in a special section of the AulaWeb e-learning portal, the slides used in the classroom and other supplementary or study support materials. It is therefore recommended to subscribe to the AulaWeb page dedicated to this teaching.

Lectures will be held in presence. Attendance is not compulsory but is strongly recommended.

Only those who have attended at least 50% of the classroom lessons (i.e. at least 30 out of 60 hours) will be considered as attending students.

Lectures may be recorded with the lecturer's permission.

Those who expect not to be able to attend at least 50% of the lectures will have to take the examination as non-attending students and are required to contact the instructor at the beginning of the lectures to agree on any additions to the programme indicated here.

In any case, it is advisable to attend the first lesson, during which the syllabus and examination procedures will be presented.

SYLLABUS/CONTENT

Syllabus for attending and non-attending students

The programme includes the study of Italian literature from the 13th century to the end of the 19th century: it will be partly carried out in lectures and partly entrusted to the students' autonomous study, through the textbook and the bibliography indicated (see, for further details, the section ‘Texts/Bibliography’). The detailed list of topics, authors and texts to be studied will be made available on AulaWeb during the lecture period.

During the lectures, various readings from the main authors will be offered, mainly centred around the following topics:

1. Tenzone, motto and beffa in the works of Dante and Boccaccio. In this part, some forms of medieval comic literature will be examined, with particular reference to their attestations in the Commedia and, above all, in the Decameron; of the latter, the complete reading of the sixth day is planned.

2. Satire between the 16th and 19th centuries. An itinerary through the satire in verse and prose of the 16th-19th centuries will be proposed, starting with Ariosto and a few notes on 17th-century production, then moving on to the rich flowering of the genre in the 18th century (Parini, Alfieri) and ending with an in-depth study of Leopardi’s satirical works.

Through these readings, some models of analysis of literary texts will be provided, either through the canonical frontal lecture, or through more workshop-based modes (see section on “Teaching methods”).

RECOMMENDED READING/BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bibliography for attending and non attending students

- Giancarlo Alfano, Paola Italia, Emilio Russo, Franco Tomasi, Profilo di letteratura italiana. Dalle origini a fine Ottocento, Milano, Mondadori, 2021 (or the two-volume version: Letteratura italiana. Dalle origini a metà Cinquecento, vol. 1, and Letteratura italiana. Da Tasso a fine Ottocento, vol. 2, Milano, Mondadori, 2018). Students are required to study only the parts indicated by the instructor at the beginning of the course.

- Dante Alighieri, Divina Commedia, commento di Anna Maria Chiavacci Leonardi, Milano, Mondadori, 3 vols. (or the edition edited by Giorgio Inglese, Roma, Carocci, or the one edited by Bianca Garavelli, Milano, Bompiani). Students are required to read and study only the 20 cantos indicated by the instructor at the beginning of the lessons on AulaWeb (8 cantos of Inferno, 8 of Purgatorio, 4 of Paradiso).

- Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron, a cura di Amedeo Quondam, Maurizio Fiorilla e Giancarlo Alfano, Milano, BUR-Rizzoli, 2018 (or any other recent and annotated edition). Also from the Decameron, only the novelle indicated by the lecturer should be read and studied.

- All materials used during the lectures and made available on AulaWeb

The list of texts is subject to change, and it is therefore advisable to wait until the lessons start before purchasing or borrowing. The bibliography of the monographic part may be supplemented with additional readings presented in class and made available on AulaWeb during the course.

TEACHERS AND EXAM BOARD

LESSONS

LESSONS START

Week of 22 September 2025 (exact lessons start will be announced as soon as the timetable for the first semester is available). The 2025/2026 academic calendar of Bachelor degree course of Letters and Humanities is available here.

Class schedule

The timetable for this course is available here: Portale EasyAcademy

EXAMS

EXAM DESCRIPTION

At the student's choice, the examination may be conducted in two alternative modes:

- first mode, written and oral. In this case, there are two examinations: a written exam relating to the literary history textbook only and an oral exam (coinciding with the final exam) on the topics covered in the classroom. The written exam is preparatory to the oral exam and must therefore be taken before the oral exam. In the event of a positive result in the written test, the textbook will no longer be subject to verification in the oral test; in the event of a negative result, the textbook will instead be taken in the oral test. 

- second mode, oral only. In this case, you take the entire programme (textbook + classroom topics) to the final examination and do not have to take the written test.

In any case, it is advisable to start studying the textbook from the beginning of the lectures.

The mark communicated at the end of the exam can be rejected; in the case of a rejection, the student will have to skip an appeal before being able to take the exam again; in the case of a failed exam, the student will be able to retake the test from the next appeal; there is no limit to the number of attempts. Further guidance on the course of the examination will be provided during the lectures.

At least seven oral and three written examinations are scheduled each year.

To take part in the tests, you must register online at least five days before the exam date.

ASSESSMENT METHODS

The written test, which is optional (see “Exam description”), consists of a series of multiple-choice or open-ended questions that will test knowledge of the basics of Italian literary history from the 13th to the 19th century.

The oral examination consists of an interview on the topics in the syllabus and aims to assess the ability to

- paraphrase and summarise a literary passage

- contextualise the works studied from a historical-cultural point of view and illustrate their metric-stylistic characteristics;

- use appropriate and effective exposition;

- elaborate a personal critical judgement on the topics dealt with.

Those students who demonstrate an organic vision of the topics addressed, combined with the ability to add personal contributions, to master the tools of literary analysis and the specific vocabulary, to use effective and appropriate exposition, will be given a mark of excellence.

Those students who demonstrate a mnemonic knowledge of the subject with a more superficial analytical ability and ability to synthesize, a correct command of the language but not always appropriate, will be given a fair mark.

A superficial knowledge and understanding of the material, a scarce analytical and expressive ability that is not always appropriate will be rewarded with a pass mark or just above a pass mark.

Students who demonstrate gaps in their knowledge of the subject matter, inappropriate language use, lack of familiarity with the literature in the programme bibliography will not be given a pass mark.

FURTHER INFORMATION

Students who will not to be able to attend at least 50% of the lessons (i.e. at least 40 of the 80 hours of classroom teaching) are required to contact the instructor by e-mail at the beginning of the course in order to agree on an alternative syllabus. It is also recommended to attend the first lesson, during which the teaching programme and the exam description will be presented.

All students, whether attending or not, are kindly requested to enrol in AulaWeb to receive communications and notices regarding the course.

Erasmus students or students who are not native speakers of Italian must contact the lecturer to agree on the examination programme. In any case, they may only sit the examination if they are sufficiently familiar with the Italian language.

For students who have valid certification of physical or learning disabilities, please note that, to request adaptations during the exam, it is necessary to first insert the certification on the University website on the servizionline.unige.it page in the "Students" section. The documentation will be verified by the University's Services Sector for the inclusion of students with disabilities and DSA.

Subsequently, significantly in advance (at least 10 days) of the exam date, it is necessary to send an e-mail to the instructor, including in copy both Professor Elisabetta Colagrossi, the Department's disability liaison (elisabetta.colagrossi@unige.it) and the Sector indicated above (disabili@unige.it or dsa@unige.it). In the email you must specify:

- the name of the course

- the date of the appeal

- the student's surname, name and student number

- the compensatory tools and dispensatory measures deemed functional and required.

The Department's disability liaison will confirm to the instructor that the applicant has the right to request adaptations during the exam and that these adaptations must be agreed with the teacher, who will respond by communicating whether it is possible to use the requested adaptations.

Requests must be sent at least 10 days before the date of the exam to allow the teacher to evaluate their content. In particular, if you intend to use concept maps for the exam (which must be much more concise than the maps used for the study), the sending must respect the expected times, otherwise there will not be the technical time necessary to make any changes.

For further information regarding the request for services and adaptations, consult this document.