Animals and Animality in Modern Italian Literature and Thought

Undergraduate

With the modernization of their country, Italian authors have been increasingly interested in animals, using representations of non-human creatures to reflect upon themselves and their changing relationships with the environment. This course focuses on modern Italian literary and philosophical texts (from Leopardi’s Operette Morali to Agamben’s L’aperto ) which strongly feature non-human animals and animality, in order to explore how modern Italian culture offers an original contribution to the re-thinking of the limits of anthropocentric humanism.