Università Roma Tre

From the Risorgimento to Fascism: History and invention in the Italian novel.

The program plans to deepen the knowledge of the transformations that the historical novel has undergone starting from the nineteenth-century models. Specifically, some texts of this tradition will be analyzed which in a different way speaks us about the Risorgimento and Fascism. Students will be offered the opportunity to learn about the recent historiographical debate and the literary critic about the relationship between literature and historiography. Finally, the reading of historical novels belonging to different cultural horizons will offer the opportunity to see how much the relationship that literature establishes with history and its rewriting changes.

Critical bibliography

Giuliana Benvenuti, Il romanzo neostorico italiano. Storia,memoria, narrazione, Roma, Carocci, 2012
An collection containing a selection of critical essays will be available at the Copyando copy shop at the beginning of the course.

It also requires knowledge of the tradition of the Italian historical novel through its main models:
Manzoni, Nievo, De Roberto, Pirandello, Bacchelli, Tomasi di Lampedusa, Banti, Morante

The complete reading of the following novel:

Ippolito Nievo, Le Confessioni d'un italiano

The course will include the active involvement of students through a short essay on two novels (part of the evaluation of the exam) to be chosen from the two suggested groups:

1) Risorgimento and post-unification Italy

Anna Banti, Noi credevamo (1967)
Antonio Tabucchi, Piazza d’Italia (1975)
Antonio Scurati, Una storia romantica (2010)
Alessandro Mari, Troppo umana speranza, (2011)
Valerio Evangelisti, Il sol dell'avvenire I, (2013)

2) War and Fascism

Elsa Morante, La Storia (1974)
Antonio Tabucchi, Tristano muore (2005)
Antonio Pennacchi, Canale Mussolini I, (2011)
Antonio Scurati, M Il figlio del secolo (2018)

In addition for non-attending students:

A specific critical material for non-attending students will be available at Copyando.