1 - 10 of 11 results for: ITALGEN

Stanford Introductory Seminar. Preference to freshmen. For Pirandello (1867-1936; Nobel Prize, 1934), to suddenly realize your entire life has been a performance is a moment of utmost horror, comedy, and opportunity for self-awareness. In a quintessentially modern fashion, he claims that the performance cannot be stopped, that authenticity is a mirage, and that learning to laugh at oneself is the only liberation. Materials include Pirandello's existential "theater within the theater," his novels, and their film adaptations, which we will study in their cultural context.

Dante's Divine Comedy and its grip on the 20th-century imagination. How is Dante co-opted by modern literary tradition? To what extent is Dante a poet of modernity? Emphasis is first on Dante's texts, then on modern literary reinterpretations of them. Authors include Dante, Cavalcanti, Levi, Pound, Eliot, Beckett, Birk and Sanders. Course in English with optional discussion section in Italian.

Required gateway course for Philosophical and Literary Thought; crosslisted in departments sponsoring the Philosophy and Literature track: majors should register in their home department; non-majors may register in any sponsoring department. Introduction to major problems at the intersection of philosophy and literature. Issues may include authorship, selfhood, truth and fiction, the importance of literary form to philosophical works, and the ethical significance of literary works. Texts include philosophical analyses of literature, works of imaginative literature, and works of both philosophical and literary significance. Authors may include Plato, Montaigne, Nietzsche, Borges, Beckett, Barthes, Foucault, Nussbaum, Walton, Nehamas, Pavel, and Pippin.

An in-depth reading of Torquato Tasso's Gerusalemme liberata in the cultural and political context of the Counter-Reformation. Conducted in English; requires advanced reading knowledge of Italian.

In this seminar we will examine several aspects of cultural life under Italian fascism, both in terms of primary materials (literary, cinematic, and architectural), and with respect to the rich historiography and analysis of these materials. Our questions will range from `what defined Italian fascism?" to `how did artistic and cultural production function under Mussolini, and what do we need to know in order to decipher it in context?", and beyond that, to `how has fascist-era cultural production been appropriated, disavowed, and otherwise (mis)understood in the decades since the end of fascism?'. Materials will include works (in Italian) by Silone, Gramsci, Moravia, Carlo Levi, Rosetta Loy, and Antonio Pennacchi, as well as secondary sources (in Italian and English) by Emilio Gentile, R.J.B. Bosworth, Schnapp, Stone, Ben-Ghiat, Fogu, and Falasca-Zamponi.

This course will probe the thought of nothingness in various European writers and thinkers. The main authors include Giacomo Leopardi, Nietszsche, Michelstader, Heidegger, Beckett, and Emile Cioran.

How the notion of decadence, initially a term of derision, shapes and underlies the positive terms of symbolism and modernism. Readings include theories of decadence and examples of symbolist and modernist texts that attempt to exorcise decadent demons, such as lust, mysticism, and the retreat into artificiality. Authors include Huysmans, Poe, Mallarmé, Nietzsche, Nordau, d¿Annunzio, Valry, Ungaretti, Marinetti, and Breton.

Based on student interest. Changes in research methods: the use of digitized texts, resources, and databases available through Stanford Libraries¿ gateways. Emphasis is on strategies for exploration of broad and specialized topics through new and traditional methods. Using a flexible schedule based on enrollment and the level of students¿ knowledge, may be offered in forms including a shortened version on the basics, independent study, or a syllabus split over two quarters. Unit levels adjusted accordingly.

Based on a survey of (and a conversation about) the history of academic Literary Criticism, and on presentation (and discussion) of contemporary ¿theoretical¿ positions, this seminar will try to enhance a reflection on the conditions, difficulties, and rewards of Literary Criticism as a profession ¿ and as an intellectual life form. Attention will be paid to the most relevant (and most pressing) institutional frame-conditions ¿ but this attention will not prevent us from trying to explore a (seldom used) potential of eccentricity and freedom that has always been inherent to (although sometimes dormant in) Literary Criticism.