Italian

(ITU11042 Italy through poetry, theatre and literature

Description

Module description:

This course is designed to introduce students to the knowledge of contemporary Italian culture through poetry, theatre and literature. The course will be divided into three parts. In weeks 1- 4, students will learn the foundation of techniques for understanding Italian theatre. In weeks 5-8 students will confront some key texts of contemporary poetry. In weeks 9-12 students will study a literary text, viewing and analyzing specific narrative techniques, solutions and devices. Texts will include poems by Pascoli, Futurist poets, Montale, Scialoja; plays by Dario Fo; autobiographical –historical narrative by Rosetta Loy. Through the different aesthetic approach and realization from a variety of authors, students will be able to get different and complementary representations of Italy.

Learning Outcomes: On successful completion of this module students will: have mastered the foundations of analysis of contemporary Italian poetry, theatre and literature; be able to critically analyse some key aspects of chosen Italian poems, plays, literary works; be able to write about a selection of Italian poems, plays, literary works to the level expected in JF; have developed knowledge of some aspects of Italy (especially relating to history, geography language and identity).

ITU11092 Florence and the birth of the Renaissance

Description

The Birth and rise of the Italian Renaissance are strictly linked to the political developments as well as the economic and cultural growths in late medieval and early modern Florence. The city’s pre-modern history represents an apt case study for investigating the connections that link politics, economics, and the arts together in the pre-modern world. If masterworks such as Dante’s Divine Comedy or Machiavelli’s The Prince were written when their authors were out of office and in exile, others such as Ficino’s Platonic Theology and Pico della Mirandola’s Oration on the Dignity of Man were, on the contrary, among the most important intellectual achievements of the Medici patronage. The introductory module aims to raise interest in, and provide background knowledge on, historical and literary questions and problems concerning the birth and development of Florentine medieval and early-modern culture from late 13th to early 16th centuries.

Learning Outcomes:

Assuming you have attended all or most lectures, completed their assignments and engaged in independent learning, at the end of this module you should be able to: • read, comprehend and assimilate a selection of short Italian texts from the medieval and Renaissance periods; • supplement their knowledge of these texts by making appropriate use of published scholarship and criticism; • present their knowledge in written form, displaying an understanding of literary techniques and critical approaches; • write clear and coherent analyses of texts under test conditions.

ITU22131 Italian Language 2

Description

Module description:

The main aims of this module are to: enhance the language skills of Listening, Reading, Writing, Spoken Production and Spoken Interaction; continue developing the understanding and use of grammatical structures and vocabulary; enhance knowledge of Italian culture and society; attainment of level B1+ of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR).

On successful completion of this module, students will: follow clear speech directed to them and the main points of clearly expressed discussion around them, including lectures; demonstrate increased knowledge and use of vocabulary, grammatical structures and pragmatic competences; select, summarise and present non-routine information on familiar topics from a range of sources; interact orally and in writing in Italian with a reasonable degree of fluency and accuracy; demonstrate increased knowledge and understanding of linguistic and cultural aspects; engage in relevant mediation activities.

ITU22132 Italian Language 2

Description

The main aims of this module are to: enhance the language skills of Listening, Reading, Writing, Spoken Production and Spoken Interaction; continue developing the understanding and use of grammatical structures and vocabulary; enhance knowledge of Italian culture and society; attainment of level B1+ of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). Learning Outcomes: On successful completion of this module, students will: follow clear speech directed to them and the main points of clearly expressed discussion around them, including lectures; demonstrate increased knowledge and use of vocabulary, grammatical structures and pragmatic competences; select, summarise and present non-routine information on familiar topics from a range of sources; interact orally and in writing in Italian with a reasonable degree of fluency and accuracy; demonstrate increased knowledge and understanding of linguistic and cultural aspects; engage in relevant mediation activities.

ITU22051 Dante's Inferno, Petrarch and the lyric tradition

Description

The first part aims to familiarize students with Dante's Inferno through a canto-by-canto reading and commentary. This will lead them to become familiar with Dante's intellectual world and appreciate one of the masterworks of World Literature. The second part aims to familiarize students with a major figure of Italian Trecento, Petrarch

Learning Outcomes:

Assuming you have attended all or most lectures, completed their assignments and engaged in independent learning, at the end of this module you should be able to: read, comprehend and assimilate a selection of Italian texts from the medieva period, such as Dante and Petrarch; supplement their knowledge of these texts by making appropriate use of published scholarship and criticism; present their knowledge in written form, displaying an understanding of literary techniques and critical approaches; write clear and coherent analyses of texts under test conditions.

ITU22061 Visions of Italy: a journey in the making of a nation

Description

This module explores the development of modern Italy from 1861 to 1945. It shows and analyses, through a variety of novels and movies by different Italian authors of the 20th and 21st century, some important aspects of Italian history and society with special focus on the: Risorgimento, Great War, Fascism, Mafia and World War II. The aim is to accompany students in the difficult historic process which caused so many changes in Italian society and culture from the Unification of Italy in 1861, to the Great War 1915-1918 that changed forever the geography and the politics of the entire world, to the advent of Fascism in 1922 in the Age of Totalitarianism with its infamous persecution of Jewish and imperialist foreign policy which led to the Shoa and the WWII. Lectures aim at confronting various artistic representation and rendering of the same historic facts from the viewpoint of different authors and through different media examining some texts (novels and movies) that illustrate aspects of it

Learning Outcomes:

On successful completion of this module, students should be able to read, comprehend and assimilate a selection of Italian texts and films from the modern period; situate them in their cultural contexts; supplement their knowledge of these materials by making appropriate use of published scholarship and criticism; present their knowledge in written form; display an understanding of literary techniques and critical approaches; describe the historical and social context of Italy in relation to modernity; interpret materials of various kinds; and write clear and coherent essays and commentaries to analyse texts and films.

ITU22032 Dante’s Divine Comedy: Purgatorio and Paradiso

Description

Students will acquire a knowledge of the second and third parts of Dante’s Divine Comedy through a canto-by-canto reading of Purgatorio and Paradiso.

Learning Outcomes:

Assuming you have attended all or most lectures, completed their assignments and engaged in independent learning, at the end of this module you should be able to: read, comprehend and assimilate a selection of cantos from the Dante’s Divine Comedy; supplement their knowledge of these cantos by making appropriate use of published scholarship and criticism; present their knowledge in written form, displaying an understanding of literary techniques and critical approaches; write clear and coherent analyses of texts under test conditions.

ITU22042 Italian History and Society in 20th century Italy

Description

Learning Outcomes:

On successful completion of this module, you will be able to engage with cultural texts in a more critical way, achieve an analytical understanding of some of Italian contemporary seminal works and a deeper understanding of the Italian society today, and be provided with some of the necessary tools valid in the current (global) debate on art, politics and society.

ITU33061 Italian Language 3

Description

This module focuses on further enhancing the language skills of Listening, Reading, Writing, Speaking, while advancing in the knowledge and use of grammatical structures and vocabulary, which are learned in context. Through this module as well as others, you will also deepen your knowledge of Italian culture and society.

Learning Outcomes:

Assuming you have attended all or most lectures, completed your assignments and engaged in independent learning, at the end of these components you should be able to: understand and work with longer and more complex written, spoken, visual and audiovisual texts from a range of media on both familiar and unfamiliar, concrete and abstract topics normally encountered in personal, social, academic or vocational life; follow lectures and presentations in your field, also when the language is complex; follow standard spoken language, live or broadcast, even in a noisy environment.

(ITU33062 Italian Language 3 )

Description

Using authentic materials (primary sources in Italian such as newspapers, journals, books, and so on), this component aims to familiarize students with the most important and useful techniques for translating a text from Italian into English. Careful analysis of the grammar structures and stylistic devices of Italian and English in comparison, as well as an insight into specific questions/problems of Italian culture. Each class will have hands-on practice plus theory of translation. Ongoing guided independent study is a requirement to meet the learning outcomes, which include the following: Translation: be able to use some key translation techniques; understand some of the key underlying theories of translation; be able to produce a fluent translation of short literary and journalistic texts; understand some of the key cultural and linguistic differences between texts. Oral: work with a wide range of stimuli on both familiar and unfamiliar, concrete and abstract topics normally encountered in personal, social, academic or vocational life; follow an animated discussion between native speakers.

ITU33041 Italy in the 21st century )

Description

Italy is rapidly transforming into a multiracial post-secular society in which relations between its citizens is shifting. This module examines the society and politics of the new millennium and how texts reflect and construct complex issues around identities: especially racial, gendered, political and religious identities. Taking issues from contemporary Italy, the module will explore theoretical and analytical approaches taken in the main from cultural studies (postcolonialism, gender, queer). Each week there will be a one-hour lecture on the historical narrative and a number of set texts and a one-hour tutorial on each of the texts outlined in the mandatory reading list.

Learning Outcomes:

Assuming you attend all or most lectures, complete assignments and engage in independent learning, at the end of this module students should be able to: demonstrate factual knowledge by gathering information from relevant sources; discuss analytically some of the major questions of 21st century Italy, especially racial, gendered, political and religious identities; critically analyse at least one of the key texts studied in tutorials; understand the basic points of at least one cultural theory (gender, queer, postcolonialism, post-secularism) and be able to apply it to a literary or filmic text.

(ITU34041 Italian Option: THE POETRY OF MICHELANGELO )

Description

The name of Michelangelo is known extensively whether as a painter – the Sistine Chapel – or as a sculptor – the David and the early Pietà; fewer perhaps are aware that he excelled also as an architect, but how many know his poetry through which he reveals, as well as much else, innermost thoughts on his creative process? He excelled his contemporaries in the visual arts and also as a lyri poet. For the Renaissance poet, Ariosto, he was ‘Michel piú che mortale Angel divino’, and this cogently communicates the fusion between intellectual and physical creation in several artistic media.

The poet Elizabeth Jennings has written of his poetry that ‘the sense of struggle in his sonnets, the feeling of passion just within control, can hardly fail to move and excite the contemporary reader of poetry’. Michelangelo wrote some three hundred poems and this option will offer the possibility of a close reading of a selection of these with a view to engaging with the artist’s existential philosophy. Learning Outcome: On successful completion of this module, students should be able to understand the complex poetry of Michelangelo in its original Italian, to link its revelation of his innermost thoughts to his creative process in his painting and sculpture, to engage with his existential philosophy and deep spirituality. They will also have a better understanding of Italian Sixteenth century poetry.

(ITU33101 Boccaccio and other novelists

Description

Boccaccio is one of the greatest writers of Western literary tradition and among the most prolific authors of Italian literature. Today, he is renowned for his narrative masterwork, the Decameron, a collection of one hundred novellas which aims to portray the late medieval-early modern world as it was. Boccaccio’s narrative style is a milestone on the way to the creation of Western realism. We will also read texts by other novelists such as Cinthio and Bandello, sources of Shakespeare, and Basile.

On successful completion of this module, students will:

have familiarized themselves with the language and style of Boccaccio, the inventor of Italian literary prose; be able to critically analyse key aspects of a novella by Boccaccio or other novelists; be able to write about a corpus of texts to the level expected; have developed knowledge of the novelistic genre, one of the most thriving in the Italian vernacular.

ITU33022 Renaissance politics and ethics: Machiavelli and Castiglione )

Description

The modern reflection on politics and historiography would be unthinkable without Niccolò Machiavelli’s treatise On the Princedoms or The Prince. The first half of the component sets the work in its historical context (clarifying the story of ‘Machiavellism’ in the Anglophone world) and offers a reading of the work’s key questions at stake: the nature of princedoms, the figure of the prince, his behaviour, fortune, etc. The second half of the module is devoted to reading Baldassarre Castiglione's Libro del Cortegiano (1528): a Renaissance dialogue set at the court of Urbino. It was translated into many languages and became enormously influential not only in defining the role of the courtier (whose modern descendants include the gentleman, the political advisor and the arbiter of taste) but also in suggesting images of the good life, the art of conversation and the spiritual nature of beauty.

Learning Outcomes:

Assuming you attend all or most lectures, complete assignments and engage in independent learning, at the end of this module you should be able to: read and understand 16th century Italian language; set the two works in their historical context; comment on 16th century Italian history, society and politics; learn about ancient, medieval and Renaissance ethical and political theories; consider the importance of the two authors and their texts for contemporary society, ethics and politics.

ITU33072 19th – 20th century Italian Narrative )

Description

This module aims to offer the students some important samples of the Italian historic narrative tradition from 1842 to the present, providing students with some knowledge on the ancient and fundamental problem of the artistic relationship with reality, in term of subjectivity and objectivity, telling and showing, lies and truth, fiction and history.

The course will depart from the founding historic essay Storia della colonna infame by Alessandro Manzoni (1842). It will then focus on the works of two contemporary Italian writers: Umberto Eco’s Il nome della rosa (1980) (an example of postmodern historic novel with a high degree of fiction); and Maria Attanasio’s Correva l’anno 1698 e nella città avvenne il fatto memorabile (1994) (an example of a historic narrative which reduces fiction to a minimum).

Learning Outcomes:

On successful completion of this module, students should be able to deal competently with some major works from Italian literature of different historical periods; develop well-informed interpretations of those texts including the ability to cite and evaluate some relevant published scholarship; display an understanding of historical, social and cultural interactions in modern Italy; present their knowledge in commentaries and essays that display an understanding of literary techniques, critical approaches and methods of social and cultural analysis; apply what they have learned to situations outside their Italian degree course; demonstrate serious potential for in-depth study and research; discuss facts, ideas and personal opinions in class, including through classroom presentations; trace and document valid comparisons between texts and other materials.

ITU44061 Beauty and ethics in contemporary Italian poetry and prose )

Description

This module offers to final-year students of Italian a poignant range of significant texts (diaries, memoirs, essays, TV programs, videos) from the panorama of contemporary Italy. The chosen texts, whose linking thread is the complex and varied idea of ‘self’, ‘identity’ and ‘otherness’, played a great role and had a great impact on Italian thought and society due to their revolutionary and unexpected content and immensely successful, popular reception. Their impact (be it negative or positive) still endures to our present times.

The following works will be analyzed linguistically and stylistically, and their content will be questioned and discussed. Benito Mussolini, Il mio diario di guerra 1915-1917 (1917): a sample of an aberrated creation of one own’s perfect self. Primo Levi, Se questo è un uomo (1947): a milestone in a classic rendering of one own’s fragile self. Alberto Manzi, Non è mai troppo tardi, a TV show broadcast between 1959 and 1968, aired to teach millions of illiterate Italians standard Italian language: a fundamental step in the making of the Italian nation. Don Lorenzo Milani, Lettera a una professoressa (1967) written with the pupils of Scuola di Barbiana under his supervision, an authentic ‘livre de chevet’ (libro manifesto) for a generation: it deals with the state education of Italian children, a fundamental work in the history of Italian society. Elena Gianini Belotti, Dalla parte delle bambine. L'influenza dei condizionamenti sociali nella formazione del ruolo femminile nei primi anni di vita (1973): a milestone in the history of gender studies. Lorella Zanardo, Il corpo delle donne (video 2009, book 2011) on the current mercification of the female body in visual media. Topics of discussion and analysis include, but are not limited to, political and/or ideological commitment, utopia, injustice, identity, otherness, marginalization, women, children, history of the Italian language, memory, story-telling.

Learning Outcomes:

On successful completion of this module, you will be able to engage with cultural texts in a more critical way, achieve an analytical understanding of some of Italian contemporary seminal works and a deeper understanding of the Italian society today, and be provided with some of the necessary tools valid in the current (global) debate on art, politics and society.

ITU44052 Renaissance epic: Ariosto and Tasso )

Description

In this module, we explore the evolution of Italian Renaissance chivalric epic from its origins to Tasso’s foundation of Christian poem and focuses on Lodovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso and Torquato Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata. Learning Outcomes: On successful completion of this module, students should be able to deal competently with major texts from Italian literature from different historical periods and develop well-informed interpretations of those texts; cite and evaluate some relevant published scholarship; display an understanding of historical, social and cultural interactions in modern Italy; present their knowledge in commentaries and essays that display an understanding of literary techniques, critical approaches and methods of social and cultural analysis; apply what they have learned to situations outside their Italian degree course; demonstrate serious potential for in-depth study and research; discuss facts, ideas and personal opinions in class, including through classroom presentations; trace and document valid comparisons between texts and other materials.

ITU34011 Italian Option: ITALIAN CINEMA: 1900-2018 )

Description

Component description

Italian cinema is one of the world’s richest, most influential and fascinating. This module opens with the earliest short silent films, capturing the first coffee ever drunk on screen and a papal wave; we analyze too an extraordinary silent epic, which influenced cinema across the developed world. The next step is to understand fascism’s hold over cinema (1922-1945). We investigate how a dictatorship builds consensus through film, but also how, and why, it fails. Immediately after the war, Italian Neorealist cinema stands the camera in front of ordinary Italian lives and the ruins of Italy’s devastated cities: what gritty realism means in these circumstances, and how it works, is discussed in lectures. Next, the so-called Golden Age of Italian cinema (1960s) provides us with Italian cinema’s biggest names (Fellini, Bertolucci, Pasolini, Antonioni): highly creative, unconventional and artistic auteurs, whose work had a huge global impact. The final lectures are dedicated to contemporary cinema (2000-2018), including Italy’s recent successes with television series like Sorrentino’s The Young Pope. Students must do at least one non-assessed presentation for this course.

Learning Outcomes:

Assuming you attend all or most lectures, complete assignments and engage in independent learning, at the end of this module students should be able to:

ITU34031 Italian Option: INTRODUCTION TO SECOND LANGUAGE TEACHING AND LEARNING )

Description

Component description

This module aims at introducing some of the fundamental issues and current trends involved in the pedagogical theory and practice of teaching and learning modern foreign languages. While it cannot lead to a qualification, the module is designed for those students who may be considering an experience working as a language assistant in Italy or pursuing a full teacher training course and a future teaching career. Aspects will be dealt with such as effective language teaching and learning, classroom management, language teaching methods, lesson planning, target language use, developing language skills, selecting and designing materials, using authentic materials, teaching vocabulary, teaching grammar, developing cultural and intercultural awareness, formative and summative assessment, the CEFR, cooperative learning, differentiation, questioning. A recommended reading and website list will be made available at the beginning of the module. Learning Outcome: Assuming you attend all or most lectures, actively participate in tutorials, complete assignments and engage in independent learning, at the end of this module you should have: developed knowledge and understanding of different teaching approaches and methodologies; developed an understanding of the factors and principles that underpin lesson planning and effective teaching and learning. You should be able to design and deliver a lesson plan for a target group and around a content of your choice; select and critically analyse sources of teaching and learning materials from a range of media; create teaching and materials to suit your intended target group; engage with feedback and use it to reflect on your plan and improve it.

ITU34041 Italian Option: THE POETRY OF MICHELANGELO )

Description

Component description

The name of Michelangelo is known extensively, whether as a painter – the Sistine Chapel – or as a sculptor – the David and the early Pietà; fewer perhaps are aware that he excelled also as an architect, but how many know his poetry through which he reveals, as well as much else, innermost thoughts on his creative process? He excelled his contemporaries in the visual arts and also as a lyric poet. For the Renaissance poet, Ariosto, he was ‘Michel piú che mortale Angel divino’, and this cogently communicates the fusion between intellectual and physical creation in several artistic media. The poet Elizabeth Jennings has written of his poetry that ‘the sense of struggle in his sonnets, the feeling of passion just within control, can hardly fail to move and excite the contemporary reader of poetry’. Michelangelo wrote some three hundred poems and this option will offer the possibility of a close reading of a selection of these with a view to engaging with the artist’s existential philosophy.

Learning Outcome:

On successful completion of this module, students should be able to understand the complex poetry of Michelangelo in its original Italian, to link its revelation of his innermost thoughts to his creative process in his painting and sculpture, to engage with his existential philosophy and deep spirituality. They will also have a better understanding of Italian 16th century poetry.

ITU34002 Italian Option: ITALIAN DRAMA 1470s-1530s)

Description

Component description

Plautus and Terence, performed in Latin and in translation, paved the way for plays in vernacular in the most important cultural centres in Italy, and some of these were a strong influence for the development of drama elsewhere in Europe. This option offers students a guided tour through some of those early dramatic forms, quite different from each other, that led to the establishing of drama as entertainment. Poliziano’s short Fabula d’Orfeo, the first dramatic work on a secular theme, performed in Mantua 1478-1480, was to lead to Monteverdi’s opera. Lorenzo de’ Medici’s Rappresentazione di San Giovanni e Paolo, performed in Florence in February 1491, offers an unique insight, for its time, in the moral conflict that assails a ruler torn between his conscience and what is strategically best for the state. Ludovico Ariosto had the first custom-built, Vitruvius inspired theatre at the court of the Este in Ferrara; his plays are remarkable for their characterisation and moral satire and we shall discuss La Lena (1528/1529). Time permitting, Niccolò Machiavelli’s Mandragola (1518/1526), a comedy perhaps best called a ‘tragedy’, and / or Gli ingannati, Siena, 1531, one of the sources for Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, will be included. All of these plays have good translations into English and a feature of the option will be assessing the translations as performable texts.

Learning Outcome:

On successful completion of this module, students should be able to understand the major contribution of Italian vernacular drama to European Theatre, in terms of performance, structure, variety of genres, stock characters, moral satire, opera. They should also be able to assess the complexity of translating into English what is written for performance.

ITU34022 Italian Option: OPERA AND LIBRETTI)

Description

Italy is the birthplace of melodrama and opera. A fundamental part of the opera is the libretto. This module will examine some operas with a special focus on their respective libretti and concentrate on the theme of love, following in particular, the history/evolution /transformation of the figure of Don Giovanni and the rule of women in the different chosen texts. The course is based on a study and close reading of the following ‘opere’ and their libretti written in Italian: Mozart’s commedia per musica Le nozze di Figaro (1786) and drammi giocosi Don Giovanni (1787), Così fan tutte (1790), libretti by Lorenzo Ponte’s. Rossini’s opera comica: Il barbiere di Siviglia (1816), libretto by Cesare Sterbini. Verdi’s melodrammi Rigoletto (1851) and Traviata (1853), libretti by Francesco Maria Piave. Puccini’s tragedia giapponese Madama Butterfly (1904), libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giocosa. Clips, DVDs, movies will be used in class.

Learning Outcomes:

On successful completion of this module, students should be able to demonstrate factual knowledge by gathering information from relevant sources, and that you can discuss analytically and critically some of the main aspects studied: music and metrics, opera and society, the making of a myth through scores and words, opera and audience, the market of opera.

Students are required to read the compulsory texts before attending classes. The texts should be read in Italian language and students are required to make all textual references to the original texts in Italian in their final essay. Please be aware that failure in doing so will result in marking down your work.

ITU34052 Italian Option: WRITERS AND CINEMA in 20th CENTURY ITALY

Description

This module explores the intersections between literature and cinema. The industry of cinema has exploited literary works commercially since its early age and employed many writers as screen players. On the other hand, writers were fascinated with the new medium but at the same time had a difficult relationship with the industry. Lectures will provide an overview of theories useful to assess the historical interplay between the two arts. They will focus on examples of intersections, adaptation, and cross-reference between Italian novels and short stories and films.

Learning Outcomes:

The module aims at providing students with critical tools needed to appreciate the use and reuse of forms and content from one medium to another.