Brevitas

Undergraduate / Graduate

Reflecting on his preference for short literary forms, Italo Calvino identifies brevitas as "the true vocation of Italian literature, which is poor in novelists but rich in poets, who even when they write in prose give their best in texts where the highest degree of invention and thought is contained in a few pages." Taking as a starting point Calvino's statement, this course explores the short and fragmentary forms of Italian literature. Not only short stories, but also aphorisms, epigrams, lyrical fragments, cases, and apologues. Some of our guiding questions will be: What are the resources of expressive density? Is a fragment the negation of a superior unity or the compendium of an entire universe? How does silence shape brevitas? The moments of close reading and theoretical reflection will be alternated with creative writing activities, in which students will have the opportunity to engage more closely and actively with the encountered texts. This course is especially designed to help students improve their written Italian and literary interpretive skills.