Comparative Literature

This course examines the history and development of the fairytales in Europe from the 16th century to the present day. The course begins with an overview of the most well-known fairytales collections by Giovanni Straparola, Giambattista Basile, Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm, before exploring modern retellings in children’s picturebooks, young adult literature, and children’s film. The course is grounded in contemporary psychological and socio-historical fairytale theory and encourages students to reflect on the form, purpose and content of classic fairytales over time.

This course examines the silencing of women and their exclusion from the canon of universal literature. It introduces the wide spectrum of gender studies and feminist theory in English-speaking countries since the 1960s, in order to analyze, assess, and re-assess novels, short-stories, poems, and other artistic expressions created by women from the end of the 19th century to today. This course discusses female authors who have fallen into oblivion and those who enjoy scholarly prestige and popular recognition. It explores the interaction between gender and feminism, as well as sexuality, sexual orientation, gender roles, the female body and mind, trauma, mental health, motherhood, ethnicity, social class, and women's civil rights during the 20th century.

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrolment is by permission of the instructor. Students master a variety of North American literary productions in relation to their cultural, social, and technological realities. Students learn to appreciate literary productions as part of complex, trans-media, and inclusive contexts. Course topics vary each term. For the most up to date course topics, access the University of Bologna Online Course Catalog. The fall 2023 course topic is on “Counterecycling: Science Fiction and Cognitive Pollution.” Through an assessment of traditional North American Science Fiction stories (and media adaptations), this course investigates whether using (in fact reusing) this genre traditional literary language helps to truly understand new complex phenomena or whether, instead, it induces cognitive pollution, therefore inhibiting our ability to observe. Recycling is certainly a useful action for the environment, but recycling literary language is not necessarily useful for seeing the limits and potential of a situation, especially where ontological levels are confused through a shared semantic. Among the themes discussed are: inventing the future: literature and technology; the evolving semantics of Science Fiction; the evolving semantics of Technology; environmental explorations: from cyberspace to metaverse; and artificial or artful Intelligence.

This course focuses on fiction and imagination in Renaissance and Baroque romantic poetry. It is taught in French and focuses on French poetry; however, the course also analyzes myths from many different cultures that are referenced throughout the studied poems.

This course examines the overall situation and theoretical points of existentialist literary theory; the main characters, works and theories of the development and development of existentialism; the thoughts of the main characters of existentialism; existentialist literary theory.