LT 354 - Love, Death and Social Strife in Italian Fiction, 1820-1920

The course will follow the development of the modern Italian novel, concentrating on its ability to express a world constantly oscillating between tradition and necessary innovations, history and the future, the weight of society and family ties and the birth of modern individuality. Love affairs, weddings, adulteries, secular and religious issues, the Risorgimento, social discomfort, the rise of the bourgeoisie, the struggle of the lower classes: a series of topics and thematic links will be used and analyzed through the entire course to highlight similarities and differences between the writers and the novels, and to delineate the main patterns of Italian literary history. Students will read major works that represent the basis of a good knowledge of Italian fiction and that belong to the Italian cultural background and education.