20750035 - Comparative Literatures I

This module offers an advanced introduction to critical theories and methodologies for analyzing literary texts, with a particular focus on their stylistic and thematic structure. It reviews the history of comparative literature, examining the transformations and emerging issues that have characterized the development of the discipline, and addresses narrative theory by analyzing the main debates and methodological questions related to the interpretation of narrative texts. Students will gain an in-depth knowledge of the principal narrative and critical theories, developing skills in the use of descriptive, commentary, dialogical, and narrative languages. Moreover, the module fosters the acquisition and independent ability to adopt a method that enables the analysis of the literary product through theoretical tools and issues inherent to narration.
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Programme

This course examines detective fiction, romance fiction, and weird fiction as central narrative forms through which modern and contemporary experience is organized, imagined, and contested. It approaches them as historically situated literary traditions and as cultural forms that shape distinct regimes of expectation, affect, and narrative organization. Particular attention will be devoted to plot structures, suspense, seriality, and the interplay between genre conventions and literary form.

Core Documentation

"Detective Fiction":
Edgar Allan Poe, The Murders in the Rue Morgue
Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles
Agatha Christie, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
Georges Simenon, Les fiançailles de M. Hire oppure Maigret tend un piège
Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep
Carlo Emilio Gadda, Quer pasticciaccio brutto de via Merulana
"Romance":
E. M. Hull, The Sheik
Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca (1938)
"Weird Fiction":
Arthur Machen, The Great God Pan
Leopoldo Lugones, Las fuerzas extrañas
Dino Buzzati, racconti scelti
Thomas Ligotti, Theatre of the Grotesque

Reference Bibliography

Chapters from: Cawelti, John G. Adventure, Mystery, and Romance: Formula Stories as Art and Popular Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976. Fisher, Mark. The Weird and the Eerie. London: Repeater Books, 2016. Ginzburg, Carlo. Miti emblemi spie: Morfologia e storia. Torino: Einaudi, 1986. Joshi, S. T. The Weird Tale. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990. Knight, Stephen. Crime Fiction, 1800–2000: Detection, Death, Diversity. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Kracauer, Siegfried. Il romanzo poliziesco: Un trattato filosofico. 1925. Traduzione italiana. Roma: Editori Riuniti, 1984. Modleski, Tania. Loving with a Vengeance: Mass-Produced Fantasies for Women. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2008. Radway, Janice A. Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984. Scaggs, John. Crime Fiction. London: Routledge, 2005. Todorov, Tzvetan. La poetica della prosa. Traduzione italiana. Milano: Bompiani, 1995.

Attendance

Attendance is strongly recommended. Active participation in lectures and seminars forms an integral part of the course and will be taken into consideration in determining the distinction between attending and non-attending students.

Type of evaluation

Assessment will take the form of an oral examination, designed to evaluate the knowledge acquired and the level of critical engagement achieved: in the theoretical and methodological frameworks of comparative literature and genre theory; in the topics addressed during the course, with particular attention to detective fiction, romance fiction, and weird fiction as narrative forms, historical literary traditions, and cultural dispositifs; and in the textual analysis of the works on the syllabus, with particular focus on plot structures, the organization of desire, secrecy, and alterity, and the relationship between genre conventions, the social imaginary, and forms of modern and contemporary experience