Italian Literature: an Introduction II B
Academic year: 2025-26
Course: Foundation Course Humanities
Credits: 3
Period: second semester
Number of hours: 24
Teacher: Mattia Petricola (mattia.petricola@gmail.com)
Course description
This course continues the exploration of prose fiction into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, focusing on the development of the novel within Italian literature from modernism to the present. While grounded in major Italian authors, the course adopts a comparative and transnational perspective, situating these texts within broader Euro-American and global transformations of narrative form and cultural experience.
Beginning with the formal and psychological innovations of Italo Svevo and Luigi Pirandello, the course examines how prose fiction responds to the crisis of stable identity and the fragmentation of subjective experience that characterize early twentieth-century modernism.
The course then turns to postwar and late twentieth-century Italian literature, with particular attention to authors such as Carlo Emilio Gadda, Alberto Moravia, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Primo Levi, and Italo Calvino. Their works offer sharply different responses to central problems of modern prose, including the relationship between language and reality, the representation of alienation and social conflict, the legacy of war and historical trauma, and the tension between realism and formal experimentation.
The final part of the course focuses on contemporary narrative, with particular attention to internationally influential Italian authors such as Roberto Saviano and Elena Ferrante, whose works engage with questions of violence, gender, memory, and social transformation, alongside voices such as Igiaba Scego, which foreground issues of migration, postcolonial identity, and cultural hybridity.
Across these materials, we will revisit and expand the central tensions introduced in the first module—between reality and representation, individual and society, narrative coherence and fragmentation—while also addressing issues that are central to contemporary literary production, including migration, ecological crisis, and queer perspectives. The course aims to show how Italian prose fiction participates in and contributes to global literary conversations, continuously reinventing itself in response to the pressures of modernity and the contemporary world.
Main goals
By the end of this course, students will:
- Develop advanced skills in the close analysis of modern and contemporary prose fiction
- Understand the major transformations of Italian prose and the novel from modernism to the present within comparative, transnational, and global frameworks
- Analyze how literary texts respond to crises of identity, history, and representation
- Engage with key themes in contemporary literature, including gender, migration, and ecological concerns
- Produce clear, well-structured, and textually grounded critical arguments
Requirements
No prior knowledge of Italian language or literature is required. All texts will be provided in English translation.
The course builds on the analytical methods introduced in the previous module and continues to emphasize guided close reading and in-class discussion. Students are expected to engage actively with the texts and to contribute to collective analysis.
Selected secondary readings will be assigned to provide critical and theoretical frameworks for understanding modern and contemporary narrative.
Exam and grading
The final grade will be determined by two components:
Attendance and Participation (30%)
Regular attendance and active engagement are essential. Students are expected to contribute thoughtfully to class discussions.
Final Written Exam (70%)
The exam will consist of two parts:
- A multiple-choice section assessing knowledge of key authors, texts, and concepts
- An essay section evaluating the ability to perform close readings and develop coherent analytical arguments
The exam will be based on materials discussed in class and on the assigned secondary readings.