This course will expose students to a selection of Italian literary classics of the late-19th and 20th centuries, with specific focus on the relationship they have with Milan and urban space in general. We begin with Alessandro Manzoni’s masterpiece, The Betrothed, which is partially set in Milan; we will trace the protagonist’s wanderings through the city and visit the house where Manzoni lived and worked. We then watch the transformation of Milan into a modern European city through a reading of Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author. Primo Levi’s If This Is a Man and Elio Vittorini’s Men and Not Men lead us to explore the city during World War II, including Milanese sites that acquired dramatic roles, such as the track from where Jews were sent to German concentration camps. The course concludes with Italo Calvino’s The Invisible Cities and his visionary postmodern images of cities, while an anthology of poems by Milanese poets will introduce us to the city’s popular neighbourhoods.
Prerequisites:
No previous Italian Literature background is necessary. More advanced students such as Italian majors receive assignments personally tailored to their level and interests.
Learning outcomes:
The course is based on the awareness that literature is not an abstract pursuit, but something which happens in the real world. It also emphasizes making literature as well as studying it: the students will have the opportunity to extend their awareness of literature through their own writing. By reading and walking through Milan students will gain insights into methods of narration, and will learn to integrate various techniques into their own analyses of the texts. They will also develop an understanding of the major issues of Modern Italian Literature, such as the development of the language, Modernism, Neorealism, Postmodernism.
Method of presentation:
The course will alternate class discussions, field studies, student presentations. Great emphasis will be given to the active participation of the student.
LANGUAGE OF PRESENTATION: English
Required work and form of assessment:
Each student will be asked to write a weekly journal to keep track of their response to the readings and the field studies, that will be discussed in class. They will have to write and present to the class a creative project, and write a research paper. There will be a midterm, and a final exam. Attendance is mandatory, as well as the punctual reading of the material assigned weekly.
Grade Breakdown:
Active participation through discussion, reading and writing: 15%, Oral presentations: 15%, Paper: 20%, Midterm: 25%, Final Exam: 25%.
content:
The course will develop as a series of lessons on an author, complemented by one or more field studies in The course will develop as a series of lessons on an author, complemented by one or more field studies in Milan.
1. Manzoni: The Betrothed, preface, ch.10-13, and 34. Field Study, Renzo’s trips to Milan; Manzoni’s
House.
2. Pirandello: Six Characters. Field Study: The transformation of Milan, from Piazza del Duomo, to the
Museo del Novecento.
3. Levi If This Is a Man and Vittorini’ Men and Not Men. Field Study to Track 21, the Memorial of the
Shoah, and Piazzale Loreto.
4. Calvino, The Invisible Cities. Field Study to the Monumental Cemetery.
5. A selections of poems in Milanese dialect, Porta, Tessa, Loi. Lecture by Prof. Luigi Sampietro.
6. Alda Merini: a selection of poems.
WEEKLY BREAKDOWN: Week 1
1. Introduction to the course. Introduction to Manzoni’s The Betrothed, an overview of the novel
2. Renzo’s trips to Milan: The Betrothed ch. 10-13, and 34.
Week 2
3. Field study. Tracing Renzo’s steps in Milan, from Corso Buenos Aires, to the Duomo, following a map of Milan in the 17th Century
4. Manzoni and the question of the language. Foreword to The Betrothed
Week 3
5. Manzoni’s Biography. Natalia Ginzburg’s Manzoni Family, ch. 1-2
6. Field study to the house of Manzoni.
Week 4
7. Introduction to Modernism and Pirandello. Six Characters, act 1
8. Pirandello, The theater as a space for innovation. Six Characters, act 2
Week5
9. Field Study: The transformation of the city: from the Duomo to il Museo del Novecento
10. Levi’s If This Is a Man, ch. 1-10. Valerio Ferme, “Translating the Babel of Horror: Primo Levi’s
Catharsis through Language”
Week 6
11. Revision
12. Midterm
Week 7
13. Levi, “The Canto of Ulysses”. If This Is a Man, ch. 11-17
14. Milan during the Resistance. Vittorini’s Men and Not Men. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, “Fascism, Writing, and
Memory
Week 8
15. Field Study, Milan, the places of WW2: Stazione Centrale (Main Train Station), track 23 (the track from which anti-fascists and Jews were sent to concentration camps in Germany), the Memorial of
the Shoah, Piazzale Loreto.
16. Porta, Tessa, Loi, and Alda Merini: 4 Milanese poets (from a selection of poems).
Week 9
17. Porta, Tessa, Loi, inventing a poetic language, lecture by Prof. Luigi Sampietro (università statale
Milano)
18. Postmodernism. Calvino, Invisible Cities. Presenting the cities. Italo Calvino. “Italo Calvino on
Invisible Cities”, in Columbia Review, no. 8 (1983), pp. 37-42.
Week 10
19. Calvino, Invisible Cities. Discussing the frame of the book. Alessia Ricciardi. “Lightness and Gravity: Calvino, Pynchon and Postmodernity”, in MLN, Vol. 114, No. 5 (December 1999), pp. 1062-1077; Barbara Spackman. “Calvino’s Non-Knowledge”, in Romance Studies, Vol. 26, No. 1 (January
2008), pp. 7-19.
20. Field study to the Monumental Cemetery: “Cities & the Dead”, “Cities & Names”, walking through the cemetery in search of names and traces of the past and recent history of Milan.
Week 11
21. Students Oral Presentations
22. Conclusions
Required readings:
1. Alessandro Manzoni. The Betrothed (1840). Penguin Classics
2. Luigi Pirandello. Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921). Penguin Classics
3. Primo Levi. If This Is a Man (1947). any edition (in some editions the title is, Survival In Auschwitz)
4. Elio Vittorini. Men and Not Men (1945). Any edition
5. Italo Calvino. Invisible Cities (1972). Any edition
6. A course-pack with a selection of poems.
The books should be purchased at Feltrinelli International, Piazza Cavour, Milano; or through Amazon or any other Internet Bookstore. Students should consider that it takes about 10 days to receive their books, and should plan in accordance.
Recommended readings:
General:
1. E.H. Wilkins. A History of Italian Literature. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1974
2. Gregory Lucente. Beautiful Fables. Self Consciousness in Italian Literature from Manzoni to
Calvino. Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986
3. Herman W. Haller. The Hidden Italy: Bilingual Edition of Italian Dialect Poetry. Detroit, Wayne State
University Press, 1986
4. Barbara Spackman. Decadent Genealogies: The Rhetoric of Sickness from Baudelaire to
D’Annunzio. Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1989
5. Lucia Re. Calvino and the Age of Neorealism: Fables of Estrangement. Stanford, Stanford
University Press, 1990
6. Herman W. Haller. The Other Italy: The Literary Canon in Dialect. Toronto, University of Toronto
Press, 1999
7. Richard Lehan. The City in Literature: An Intellectual and Cultural History. Berkeley, University of
California Press, 1998
8. Ruth Ben-Ghiat. Italian Fascism: History, Memory, and Representation. New York, St. Martin’s
Press, 1999
9. Edward J. Ahearn. Urban Confrontations in Literature and Social Science, 1848-2001. Burlington, VT, Ashgate Publishing, 2010.
On Alessandro Manzoni:
10. Natalia Ginzburg, The Manzoni Family, Arcade Publishing, 1989
On Italo Calvino:
11. Italo Calvino. “Italo Calvino on Invisible Cities”, in Columbia Review, no. 8 (1983), pp. 37-42.
12. Carolyn Springer. “Textual Geography”, in Modern Language Studies, Vol. 15, No.4 (Autumn,
1985), pp. 289-290
13. Alessia Ricciardi. “Lightness and Gravity: Calvino, Pynchon and Postmodernity”, in MLN, Vol. 114, No. 5 (December 1999), pp. 1062-1077
14. Barbara Spackman. “Calvino’s Non-Knowledge”, in Romance Studies, Vol. 26, No. 1 (January
2008), pp. 7-19
On Primo Levi:
15. Valerio Ferme. “Translating the Babel of Horror: Primo Levi’s Catharsis through Language in the
Holocaust Memoir Se questo è un uomo”, in Italica, Vol. 78, No. 1 (Spring, 2001), pp. 53-73.
On Elio Vittorini:
16. Ruth Ben-Ghiat. “Fascism, Writing, and Memory: The Realist Aesthetic in Italy, 1930-1950”, in The
Journal of Modern History, Vol. 67, No. 3 (Sept., 1995), pp. 627-665.
On Alda Merini:
17. Alda Merini (author), Susan Stewart (translator). Love Lessons: Selected Poems of Alda Merini.
Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2009.
Brief Biography of Instructor:
Maria Sepa (laurea in lettere, Università di Roma, M.A. and Ph.D., Italian Literature, Brown University), has taught Italian Literature at the University of Virginia, Wellesley College, and Brown in Bologna
Program. She has been with IES Abroad Milan since 1996. Along with teaching, she is also engaged in
promoting cultural exchanges between Italy and the USA, writing on the subject a weekly column on Internazionale, and a monthly column on the literary magazine, L'Immaginazione, and running the blog, usalibri (www.usalibri.blogspot.com[2]). She is the translator from English for the cultural pages of Il Corriere della Sera.
Literature And The City
This course will expose students to a selection of Italian literary classics of the late-19th and 20th centuries, with specific focus on the relationship they have with Milan and urban space in general. We begin with Alessandro Manzoni’s masterpiece, The Betrothed, which is partially set in Milan; we will trace the protagonist’s wanderings through the city and visit the house where Manzoni lived and worked. We then watch the transformation of Milan into a modern European city through a reading of Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author. Primo Levi’s If This Is a Man and Elio Vittorini’s Men and Not Men lead us to explore the city during World War II, including Milanese sites that acquired dramatic roles, such as the track from where Jews were sent to German concentration camps. The course concludes with Italo Calvino’s The Invisible Cities and his visionary postmodern images of cities, while an anthology of poems by Milanese poets will introduce us to the city’s popular neighbourhoods.
No previous Italian Literature background is necessary. More advanced students such as Italian majors receive assignments personally tailored to their level and interests.
The course is based on the awareness that literature is not an abstract pursuit, but something which happens in the real world. It also emphasizes making literature as well as studying it: the students will have the opportunity to extend their awareness of literature through their own writing. By reading and walking through Milan students will gain insights into methods of narration, and will learn to integrate various techniques into their own analyses of the texts. They will also develop an understanding of the major issues of Modern Italian Literature, such as the development of the language, Modernism, Neorealism, Postmodernism.
The course will alternate class discussions, field studies, student presentations. Great emphasis will be given to the active participation of the student.
LANGUAGE OF PRESENTATION: English
Each student will be asked to write a weekly journal to keep track of their response to the readings and the field studies, that will be discussed in class. They will have to write and present to the class a creative project, and write a research paper. There will be a midterm, and a final exam. Attendance is mandatory, as well as the punctual reading of the material assigned weekly.
Grade Breakdown:
Active participation through discussion, reading and writing: 15%, Oral presentations: 15%, Paper: 20%, Midterm: 25%, Final Exam: 25%.
The course will develop as a series of lessons on an author, complemented by one or more field studies in The course will develop as a series of lessons on an author, complemented by one or more field studies in Milan.
1. Manzoni: The Betrothed, preface, ch.10-13, and 34. Field Study, Renzo’s trips to Milan; Manzoni’s
House.
2. Pirandello: Six Characters. Field Study: The transformation of Milan, from Piazza del Duomo, to the
Museo del Novecento.
3. Levi If This Is a Man and Vittorini’ Men and Not Men. Field Study to Track 21, the Memorial of the
Shoah, and Piazzale Loreto.
4. Calvino, The Invisible Cities. Field Study to the Monumental Cemetery.
5. A selections of poems in Milanese dialect, Porta, Tessa, Loi. Lecture by Prof. Luigi Sampietro.
6. Alda Merini: a selection of poems.
WEEKLY BREAKDOWN: Week 1
1. Introduction to the course. Introduction to Manzoni’s The Betrothed, an overview of the novel
2. Renzo’s trips to Milan: The Betrothed ch. 10-13, and 34.
Week 2
3. Field study. Tracing Renzo’s steps in Milan, from Corso Buenos Aires, to the Duomo, following a map of Milan in the 17th Century
4. Manzoni and the question of the language. Foreword to The Betrothed
Week 3
5. Manzoni’s Biography. Natalia Ginzburg’s Manzoni Family, ch. 1-2
6. Field study to the house of Manzoni.
Week 4
7. Introduction to Modernism and Pirandello. Six Characters, act 1
8. Pirandello, The theater as a space for innovation. Six Characters, act 2
Week5
9. Field Study: The transformation of the city: from the Duomo to il Museo del Novecento
10. Levi’s If This Is a Man, ch. 1-10. Valerio Ferme, “Translating the Babel of Horror: Primo Levi’s
Catharsis through Language”
Week 6
11. Revision
12. Midterm
Week 7
13. Levi, “The Canto of Ulysses”. If This Is a Man, ch. 11-17
14. Milan during the Resistance. Vittorini’s Men and Not Men. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, “Fascism, Writing, and
Memory
Week 8
15. Field Study, Milan, the places of WW2: Stazione Centrale (Main Train Station), track 23 (the track from which anti-fascists and Jews were sent to concentration camps in Germany), the Memorial of
the Shoah, Piazzale Loreto.
16. Porta, Tessa, Loi, and Alda Merini: 4 Milanese poets (from a selection of poems).
Week 9
17. Porta, Tessa, Loi, inventing a poetic language, lecture by Prof. Luigi Sampietro (università statale
Milano)
18. Postmodernism. Calvino, Invisible Cities. Presenting the cities. Italo Calvino. “Italo Calvino on
Invisible Cities”, in Columbia Review, no. 8 (1983), pp. 37-42.
Week 10
19. Calvino, Invisible Cities. Discussing the frame of the book. Alessia Ricciardi. “Lightness and Gravity: Calvino, Pynchon and Postmodernity”, in MLN, Vol. 114, No. 5 (December 1999), pp. 1062-1077; Barbara Spackman. “Calvino’s Non-Knowledge”, in Romance Studies, Vol. 26, No. 1 (January
2008), pp. 7-19.
20. Field study to the Monumental Cemetery: “Cities & the Dead”, “Cities & Names”, walking through the cemetery in search of names and traces of the past and recent history of Milan.
Week 11
21. Students Oral Presentations
22. Conclusions
1. Alessandro Manzoni. The Betrothed (1840). Penguin Classics
2. Luigi Pirandello. Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921). Penguin Classics
3. Primo Levi. If This Is a Man (1947). any edition (in some editions the title is, Survival In Auschwitz)
4. Elio Vittorini. Men and Not Men (1945). Any edition
5. Italo Calvino. Invisible Cities (1972). Any edition
6. A course-pack with a selection of poems.
The books should be purchased at Feltrinelli International, Piazza Cavour, Milano; or through Amazon or any other Internet Bookstore. Students should consider that it takes about 10 days to receive their books, and should plan in accordance.
General:
1. E.H. Wilkins. A History of Italian Literature. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1974
2. Gregory Lucente. Beautiful Fables. Self Consciousness in Italian Literature from Manzoni to
Calvino. Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986
3. Herman W. Haller. The Hidden Italy: Bilingual Edition of Italian Dialect Poetry. Detroit, Wayne State
University Press, 1986
4. Barbara Spackman. Decadent Genealogies: The Rhetoric of Sickness from Baudelaire to
D’Annunzio. Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1989
5. Lucia Re. Calvino and the Age of Neorealism: Fables of Estrangement. Stanford, Stanford
University Press, 1990
6. Herman W. Haller. The Other Italy: The Literary Canon in Dialect. Toronto, University of Toronto
Press, 1999
7. Richard Lehan. The City in Literature: An Intellectual and Cultural History. Berkeley, University of
California Press, 1998
8. Ruth Ben-Ghiat. Italian Fascism: History, Memory, and Representation. New York, St. Martin’s
Press, 1999
9. Edward J. Ahearn. Urban Confrontations in Literature and Social Science, 1848-2001. Burlington, VT, Ashgate Publishing, 2010.
On Alessandro Manzoni:
10. Natalia Ginzburg, The Manzoni Family, Arcade Publishing, 1989
On Italo Calvino:
11. Italo Calvino. “Italo Calvino on Invisible Cities”, in Columbia Review, no. 8 (1983), pp. 37-42.
12. Carolyn Springer. “Textual Geography”, in Modern Language Studies, Vol. 15, No.4 (Autumn,
1985), pp. 289-290
13. Alessia Ricciardi. “Lightness and Gravity: Calvino, Pynchon and Postmodernity”, in MLN, Vol. 114, No. 5 (December 1999), pp. 1062-1077
14. Barbara Spackman. “Calvino’s Non-Knowledge”, in Romance Studies, Vol. 26, No. 1 (January
2008), pp. 7-19
On Primo Levi:
15. Valerio Ferme. “Translating the Babel of Horror: Primo Levi’s Catharsis through Language in the
Holocaust Memoir Se questo è un uomo”, in Italica, Vol. 78, No. 1 (Spring, 2001), pp. 53-73.
On Elio Vittorini:
16. Ruth Ben-Ghiat. “Fascism, Writing, and Memory: The Realist Aesthetic in Italy, 1930-1950”, in The
Journal of Modern History, Vol. 67, No. 3 (Sept., 1995), pp. 627-665.
On Alda Merini:
17. Alda Merini (author), Susan Stewart (translator). Love Lessons: Selected Poems of Alda Merini.
Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2009.
Maria Sepa (laurea in lettere, Università di Roma, M.A. and Ph.D., Italian Literature, Brown University), has taught Italian Literature at the University of Virginia, Wellesley College, and Brown in Bologna
Program. She has been with IES Abroad Milan since 1996. Along with teaching, she is also engaged in
promoting cultural exchanges between Italy and the USA, writing on the subject a weekly column on Internazionale, and a monthly column on the literary magazine, L'Immaginazione, and running the blog, usalibri (www.usalibri.blogspot.com [2]). She is the translator from English for the cultural pages of Il Corriere della Sera.