Ateneo - UPO

We are now twenty years and more into the new millennium. A hundred years ago, a wide-ranging generation of innovative literary critics began to emerge in our country. Curious and eclectic, they operated between language and literature, philology and structuralism, theory and comparative literature, psychoanalysis and sociology, narratology and semiology, the aesthetics of reception and cultural history... They have been holding sway to this day over a good part of our literary studies, in universities and beyond. A collective project of combined teaching and research tries to select fifty-two original critical temperaments, chosen in a period of about twenty-one years – from March 24, 1920, when Cesare Cases was born, to December 6, 1940, the date of birth of Romano Luperini. Amongst them Adelia Noferi, Lea Ritter Santini, Delia Frigessi, Lidia De Federicis, Maria Luisa Doglio, Grazia Cherchi, Rosanna Bettarini and Teresa de Lauretis as the few repre- sentatives of a diverse feminine tradition, already liable – in spite of their limited numbers, a consequence of the times under scrutiny – to switch from academic and theoretical criticism to a more militant and pedagogical one, equally at home within the university as in the publishing world, mixing textual commentary, civil commitment and gender studies, between Italy, Europe and America. This project and this course are intended to be not only and not so much a homage, but the outline of a politics (in but also without quotation marks) of criticism and critics in the second half of the 20th century and at the more or less frayed and fraught dawn of the new century and millennium we are living through.

La critica viva. Lettura collettiva di una generazione 1920-1940, edited by Luciano Curreri and Pierluigi Pellini, Macerata, Quodlibet, 2022.

The course has an ethical as well as a political purpose: (a) it wants to interweave teaching, research and society in a plural and non-standardised manner: (b) it wants to challenge the growing (and wretched) abandonment, in universities, of the history of criticism; (c) it makes evident the capacity of literary studies to affect social discourse, contributing - with their freedom and diversity - to restore as a whole a richer, less provincial, more complex entire culture; (d) it claims the indispensable contribution that literary scholars have made to the Italian twentieth century and (perhaps) are still able to make.

Basic literary-historical, linguistic-stylistic and critical knowledge.

Lectures followed by discussions; reading and commenting on texts in the classroom, with questions; web-based teaching if necessary.

Students who plan not to attend classes are kindly requested to contact the teacher to get some general guidelines for the exam preparation.

The final exam consists of an oral examination, which will focus on the following points: 1. Verification of knowledge of the research found in 20th century Italian criticism, and in particular that which is to be found in the long generation born between 1920 and 1940, starting from the text adopted and indicated above and corresponding to 50% of the weight on the exam grade; 2. Testing of skills in examining and interpreting the critics and texts examined (with particular attention to the texts chosen and read by the teacher in the classroom) and at the same time of communication skills and potential for already expressing an autonomous critical capacity, starting with a question on a couple of specific essays, corresponding to 50% of the exam grade. At least acceptable answers to each of the questions will be required to pass the examination.

Introduction - Luciano Curreri e Pierluigi Pellini
Cesare Cases (1920-2005) - Guido Mattia Gallerani
Gianfranco Folena (1920-1992) - Luca D’Onghia
D’Arco Silvio Avalle (1920-2002) - Nicola Morato
Mario Baratto (1920-1984) - Giacomo Morbiato
Domenico De Robertis (1921-2011) - Maria Rita Traina
Dante Isella (1922-2007) - Niccolò Scaffai
Adelia Noferi (1922-2014) - Oleksandra Rekut-Liberatore
Sergio Romagnoli (1922-1997) - Diego Salvadori
Giovanni Pozzi (1923-2002) - Francesco de Cristofaro
Sebastiano Timpanaro (1923-2000) - Davide Dalmas
Luigi Blasucci (1924-2021) - Pierluigi Pellini
Ezio Raimondi (1924-2014) - Giulio Iacoli
Piero Camporesi (1926-1997) - Riccardo Donati
Lea Ritter Santini (1928-2008) - Marco Maggi
Cesare Segre (1928-2014) - Nicola Turi
Cesare Garboli (1928-2004) - Gianluigi Simonetti
Giorgio Bárberi Squarotti (1929-2017) - Valter Boggione
Delia Frigessi (1929-2012) - Lucia Rodler
Pietro Citati (1930-2022) - Paolo Lagazzi
Stefano Agosti (1930-2019) - Bart Van den Bossche
Lidia De Federicis (1930-2011) - Thea Rimini
Luigi Baldacci (1930-2002) - Lorenzo Tommasini
Lionello Sozzi (1930-2014) - Gabriella Bosco
Fausto Curi (1930) - Federico Fastelli
Guido Guglielmi (1930-2002) - Beatrice Laghezza
Edoardo Sanguineti (1930-2010) - Gilda Policastro
Vittorio Spinazzola (1930-2020) - Gianni Turchetta
Franco Fido (1931-2020) - Valeria Tavazzi
Umberto Eco (1932-2016) - Simona Micali
Alberto Asor Rosa (1933) - Emanuela Piga Bruni
Remo Ceserani (1933-2016) - Daniela Brogi
Francesco Orlando (1934-2010) - Stefano Lazzarin
Elio Gioanola (1934) - Giuseppe Traina
Alessandro Serpieri (1935-2017) - Lucia Claudia Fiorella
Maria Luisa Doglio (1936) - Pasquale Guaragnella
Carlo Alberto Madrignani (1936-2008) - Ilaria Muoio
Gian Luigi Beccaria (1936) - Marco Villa
Giancarlo Mazzacurati (1936-1995) - Stefano Jossa
Franco Ferrucci (1936-2010) - Filippo La Porta
Pier Vincenzo Mengaldo (1936) - Alberto Comparini
Gianni Celati (1937-2022) - Matteo Martelli
Grazia Cherchi (1937-1995) - Giuseppe Carrara
Gilberto Lonardi (1937) - Ida Campeggiani
Rosanna Bettarini (1938-2012) - Federica Pich
Marco Cerruti (1938-2013) - Luciano Curreri
Eduardo Saccone (1938-2008) - Matteo Palumbo
Teresa de Lauretis (1938) - Elena Porciani
Antonio Faeti (1939) - Giordana Piccinini e Emilio Varrà
Mario Lavagetto (1939-2020) - Matteo Residori
Claudio Magris (1939) - Ernestina Pellegrini
Paolo Valesio (1939) - Martina Della Casa
Romano Luperini (1940) - Mimmo Cangiano

In order to attain the knowledge and skills corresponding to a passing level, students are asked to demonstrate: (KNOWLEDGE) to know the varied typologies and personalities of a large part of Italian criticism of the second half of the twentieth century; (SKILLS) to be able to analyse and interpret critical texts, linking historical-literary and linguistic elements to more strictly ethical and political ones; (TRANSVERSAL SKILLS) to be able to present in a clear and effective manner knowledge, information and opinions related to the texts and problems dealt with, using appropriate language and terminology. For the attainment of a more advanced level, the student must demonstrate: a personal vision of the themes addressed in the lessons, combined with a critical ability for analysis and synthesis.