Italian Modernity and the Novel: Twelve Great Books from the Long Nineteenth Century

This seminar is designed as a survey of the Italian contribution to the novelistic genre. The course will be structured around 11 great Italian novels in 12 weeks and supplemented by theoretical, methodological and historical considerations that pertain to questions of reading and interpretation, to the novel as a literary genre, and to those problems centered on the specificity of Italian modernity. We will read novels by Foscolo, Manzoni, Verga and Pirandello, among others. Reading knowledge of Italian required.