Università Roma Tre

Environmental Dystopia in Italy: 1970-2020

This course considers Italian literary narratives of emergency, global catastrophe and survival in a damaged world, from the 1970s to the present. We will explore how dystopian speculation plays a key role in contemporary conceptions of human and more-than-human vulnerability, shaping pervasive stories and social practices. Pursuing debates in world literature, political philosophy, and the environmental humanities, the course is designed for students who are interested in the following questions:

· How have modern and contemporary Italian writers imagined dystopian and catastrophic futures, since 1970?

· What lines of influence connect late twentieth-century Italian dystopian fiction to the works and concerns of a more recent generation of novelists?

· In an age of global connectedness, does it still make sense to assume that the cultural and political force of literature is located in specific discursive, national and geopolitical contexts (e.g. the “Italian canon”)?

PRIMARY TEXTS

Superstudio, ‘Le Dodici Città Ideali’, Casabella, 361, 1972, pp. 45-55.

Mario Soldati, Lo smeraldo (Mondadori, 1974).

Guido Morselli, Dissipatio H.G. (Adelphi, 1977).

Carlo Cassola, Il superstite (Rizzoli, 1978).

Paolo Volponi, Il pianeta irritabile (Einaudi, 1978).

Simona Vinci, Rovina (Einaudi, 2007).

Paolo Zanotti, Bambini bonsai (Ponte alle Grazie, 2010).

Maria Rosa Cutrufelli, L’isola delle madri (Mondadori, 2020).