Contemporary Italian literature

6 ECTS credits
150 h study time

Offer 2 with catalog number 1015599BNR for all students in the 2nd semester at a (B) Bachelor - advanced level.

Semester

2nd semester

Enrollment based on exam contract

Impossible

Grading method

Grading (scale from 0 to 20)

Can retake in second session

Yes

Taught in

Italian

Faculty

Faculty of Languages & Humanities

Department

Linguistics and Literary Studies

Educational team

Dirk Vanden Berghe (course titular)

Activities and contact hours

26 contact hours Lecture
65 contact hours Independent or External Form of Study

Course Content

The course focuses on the Italian literature between the second World War and the present day, more specifically on narrative and poetry. The boundaries, the forms, the different levels of literariness in contemporary literary genres, together with their position within the actual Italian cultural industry will be an essential part of the course: narrative between high and low fictionality, with or without essayistic components; poetry consisting of verse, prose and performance. An essential distinction will be made between the characteristics of works that represent primarily a cognitive experience, largely predominant in literature until the 1970’s but still detectable in some authors of the 21st century, and the features of works that bring an utterly emotive experience to their readers, ever more frequent since the digital revolution and the widespread multimedial storytelling. Questioning the components of the expressive choices of each author will be central to this course.

The lectures will start on the basis of extracts from literary works or will extensively comment book chapters read previously by the students, who will also receive assignments (exercises on narrative and poetic topics, discussed during the lectures).

Course material

Handbook (Recommended) : Cuori intelligenti, 3b, Dal secondo Novecento a oggi, C. GIUNTA, Garzanti Scuola, 9788869645297, 2018
Digital course material (Required) : Letteratura italiana contemporanea - Dispense, D. VANDEN BERGHE, 2023
Handbook (Recommended) : Il testo narrativo, A. BERNARDELLI - R. CESERANI, Il Mulino, Bologna, 9788815106872, 2005
Digital course material (Required) : Lettereratura italiana contemporanea - Lista di lettura - Esercizi, D. VANDEN BERGHE, 2022

Additional info

Two to four hours of additional guest lectures by a guest lecturer may also be included in the lectures.

Learning Outcomes

General competencies

Through this basic introduction unit students acquire a first though substantial knowledge (facts, movements) and insight (relations) of the 20th and 21th century Italian literature. At the same time they can recognise, analytically describe and explain functions of basic literary techniques and concepts during the lectures and assignments: structure and forms of narrative texts, stylistic, rhetorical, metrical processes.

Grading

The final grade is composed based on the following categories:
Oral Exam determines 50% of the final mark.
Practical Exam determines 10% of the final mark.
Other Exam determines 40% of the final mark.

Within the Oral Exam category, the following assignments need to be completed:

Genres,texts,personal reading with a relative weight of 1 which comprises 50% of the final mark.

Within the Practical Exam category, the following assignments need to be completed:

Collaboration in classes with a relative weight of 1 which comprises 10% of the final mark.

Within the Other Exam category, the following assignments need to be completed:

ExercisesPapers with a relative weight of 1 which comprises 40% of the final mark.

Additional info regarding evaluation

Weekly preparation of the text extracts and weekly attendance at the lectures is compulsory (essential to understand the discussion about the texts). Text preparation and student collaboratiuon during the lectures is evaluated by the teacher.

The first drafts of the exercices will be evaluated during the semester.

Students have to succeed in all parts of the evaluation procedure in order to obtain a pass mark for the whole course.

Student who fail to participate in all the parts of the evaluation procedure will be automatically marked as "absent".

Students can transfer to the next exam session the results of those parts of the evaluation process for which they have obtained a pass mark. These results can not be transferred to the following academic year.

At the oral exam, the students are granted with preparation time

Allowed unsatisfactory mark

The supplementary Teaching and Examination Regulations of your faculty stipulate whether an allowed unsatisfactory mark for this programme unit is permitted.

Academic context