ROMANCE PHILOLOGY
Academic year and teacher
If you can't find the course description that you're looking for in the above list,
please see the following instructions >>
- Versione italiana
- Academic year
- 2019/2020
- Teacher
- MONICA LONGOBARDI
- Credits
- 6
- Didactic period
- Primo Semestre
- SSD
- L-FIL-LET/09
Training objectives
- The course aims to guide the student to discover the medieval texts that have formed the matrix for a lot of surprising rewrites in modern and contemporary Romance literatures.
Prerequisites
- None. The Professor will provide original texts and all the necessary translation so as to fully understand the texts in the learning program.
Course programme
- The myth of Melusina from the 12th to the 20th century (first part of the course)
Stories that refer to the fairies of fortune (of the Morganian or Melusinian type) begin to appear in Marie de France's Lais, in novels such as Partonopeus de Blois, or, about supernatural brides, in Latin literature, particularly at the court of Henry II Plantagenet. With Jean d’Arras, the founding fairy of the famous Lusignan family (Poitou) will bear the name of Mélusine (1393). Starting from this prose novel and from the verse version of Coudrette (1401), we will follow the fortune of this myth in European literature over the centuries, coming to privilege some little-known, but really surprising versions of twentieth-century Italian literature.
The return of the gods in the literature between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: The Bestia del Vaccarès by J. D’Arbaud (second part of the course).
Great novel of panic literature, La Bèstio dóu Vacarés (1926) imagines the encounter between a gardian, that is a herdsman in the fifteenth century Camargue and a faun who in that wild land found the last refuge after the Christian persecutions against the pagan pantheon.
D 'Arbaud superlatively describes all the moods of the Christian, from horror to brotherhood. But the most suggestive scenario is the mythical Camargue, land of mirages, a breeding ground for bulls and horses, which in that faun will recognize their ancient lord. Didactic methods
- Class lectures. Organization of convention and seminars about the course themes.
Learning assessment procedures
- Final oral exam testing the students' knowledge of the texts, of critical essays, and of literary historical context.
Reference texts
- Compulsory bibliography for attending students:
Laurence Harf-Lancner, Morgana e Melusina : la nascita delle fate nel Medioevo,
Torino : G. Einaudi, 1989.
Jean d'Arras, Mélusine, ou la noble histoire de Lusignan : roman du XIVe siècle, nouvelle édition critique … traduction, présentation et notes par Jean-Jacques Vincensini, Paris : Librairie générale francaise, 2003.
Melusine : atti del Convegno internazionale, Verona, 10-11 novembre 2006, a cura di Anna Maria Babbi, Verona : Fiorini, 2009.
M. Longobardi, Viaggio in Occitania, Aicurzio, Virtuosa-Mente, 2019.
An anthology of texts and further bibliography will be provided during the course to attending students.
Non-attending students and foreign students will be provided with a specific home-study program/ bibliography suitable for an independent preparation of the exam and, where appropriate, according to their linguistic abilities. Pleas, contact the professor by Unife email.
