Università Roma Tre

"Italy before Italy: from Dante to the Risorgimento"

The course will explore the surfacing in some important texts of Italian literature of and idea of Italy, well before the eighteenth-century unification process and beyond political-institutional projects. From Dante to Petrarch, Machiavelli and Guicciardini, through to the Risorgimento, the crucial role played by literature in the development of a historical and cultural space and of a communal language will be investigated. A pivotal point will be represented by Ugo Foscolo, whose disillusionment with the Napoleonic experience and whose ties with his Venetian homeland intertwine with romantic poetics and with the development of a national historical and cultural perspective.

- Ugo Foscolo, "Le ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis", a cura di M.A. Terzoli, Roma, Carocci, 2012;
- F. Bruni, Italia. "Vita e avventure di un’idea", Bologna, il Mulino, 2010 (selezione di capitoli).
Further bibliography will be indicated by the end of the course.

Texts analysed during lectures will be uploaded on Moodle, together with didactic materials.
In order to have a basic knowledge of the authors taken into account (chronology, main works, poetics) students could refer to any recent handbook of Italian literature of their choice. An important point of reference is represented by the entries of the Enciclopedia Italiana, of the Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani and of the Enciclopedia dell’Italiano available online (www.treccani.it).