Department of Italian
Paper It 4
Autobiography and Self-Representation in Italian Culture
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Telling stories about ourselves and our lives is a universal human cultural trait, but it takes distinct forms in different cultures and different periods. This course follows the pattern of the Italian "Texts and Contexts" course in Part 1A by ranging over a wide range of periods in Italian culture, from medieval to modern. Instead of the contextual approach of the 1A course, however, here texts are studied in relation to a single overarching aspect; the theory and practice of 'self-representation' or 'autobiography'. You will be required to study single texts in detail, from works of literature in prose and poetry, to letters and films, but also to compare and contrast different texts, across genres, forms, periods and media (including going beyond the core texts if you wish). You will also be introduced to some of the core theoretical issues at stake in studying autobiography and self-representation.
The topics to be taught will vary from year to year.
In 2013-2014, the following topics will be taught:
Topics
- Medieval Selves: Dante and Petrarch
- 20th-Century Women's Autobiography: Aleramo and Banti
- Early Modern Women's letters: Franco and Tarabotti
- Film and Autobiography: Fellini and Moretti
Preparation and Teaching
Each topic will be taught in a series of 4 lectures / seminars and 2 supervision during MT and LT. There will be revision teaching in ET. The order in which the topics will be taught is subject to confirmation, but is expected to be as follows: Michaelmas Term: 2 introductory seminars (Dr H. Webb)4 lectures on 20th-Century Women's Autobiography (Ms A. Ronchetti)
4 lectures on on Dante and Petrarch (Dr H. Webb)
Lent Term: 4 lectures on Early Modern Women's letters (Dr A. Brundin)
4 lectures on Film and Autobiography (Prof. R. Gordon)
These lectures/seminars will be supplemented by supervisions, organised and run by members of the department.
In addition to familiarising yourself with the primary texts listed for each topic you are interested in, you should look at all or relevant parts of the following:
Preliminary reading on autobiography in general, see:
- L. Anderson, Autobiography (London: Routledge, 2000)
- P. Lejeune, Le Pacte autobiographique (1975): see 'The Autobiographical Contract' in T. Todorov, ed. , French Literary Theory Today (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1982)
- J. Olney, ed., Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1980)
- R. Pascal, Design and Truth in Autobiography (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1960)
- J. Sturrock, The Language of Autobiography (Cambridge: CUP, 1993)
Preliminary reading on autobiography in Italy, see:
- 'Autobiography', entry in Oxford Companion to Italian Literature (Oxford: OUP, 2002)
- A. Battistini, Lo specchio di Dedalo. Biografia e autobiografia (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1990)
- F. D'Intino, L'autobiografia moderna. Storia, forme, problemi (Roma, Bulzoni, 1998)
- M. Guglielminetti, 'Biografia e autobiografia', in Letteratura italiana. Vol. v. Le questioni, edited by A. Asor Rosa (Turin: Einaudi, 1986), pp.829-86
Examination
The paper will be assessed by a three-hour written exam. There will be at least four questions on each topic and you will be required to answer three questions on three different topics.For further information please contact Professor Robert Gordon rscg1@cam.ac.uk.
Introductory Reading Lists for Topics
Medieval Selves: Dante and Petrarch
This topic will look at two of the major figures of Italian medieval literature and the ways in which each uses poetry as a means of self-representation. Both the Vita nuova and the Canzoniere tell tales of love for a very particular woman, the death of that woman, and the poet's subsequent search for direction in her absence. But above all, both texts tell of the poet's ambition and ideas of transcendency (whether religious or literary).
Core texts
- Dante, Vita Nuova. Students should if possible buy the edition published by University of Notre Dame Press, ed. Dino Cervigni and Edward Vasta. Otherwise any other edition with a facing-page English translation will do.
- Petrarch, Canzoniere. Students should if possible buy the edition published by Indiana University Press, ed. and trans. Mark Musa. Otherwise any other edition with facing page English translation will do. Read as much of the Canzoniere as you can. Lectures, supervisions, and exams will focus on the following poems: 1, 3, 5, 16, 35, 61, 62, 70, 74, 81, 82, 90, 126, 128, 134, 159, 264, 267, 268, 286, 302, 320, 365, 366
Secondary reading
On Dante:
- Rachel Jacoff, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Dante (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007)
- Robert Pogue Harrison The Body of Beatrice (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1988)
- Dante, Rime giovanili e della 'Vita Nuova', ed. by Teodolinda Barolini; with notes by Manuele Gragnolati (Milan: Rizzoli, 2009)
- Manuele Gragnolati, 'Authorship and Performance in Dante's Vita nova' in Aspects of the Performative in Medieval Culture, Manuele Gragnolati and Almut Suerbaum, eds. (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010), pp. 123-40
On Dante and Petrarch:
- Teodolinda Barolini, Dante and the Origins of Italian Literary Culture (New York: Fordham University Press, 2006)
- Zygmunt Baranksi and Theodore J. Cachey Jr., eds. Petrarch and Dante: Anti-Dantism, Metaphysics, Tradition (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009)
On Petrarch:
- Giuseppe Mazzotta, The Worlds of Petrarch (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1993)
- Victoria Kirkham and Armando Maggi, eds. Petrarch: A Critical Guide to the Complete Works (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2009)
20th-Century Women's Autobiography: Aleramo and Banti
Core texts
- * Sibilla Aleramo Una Donna (1906)
- * Anna Banti Artemisia (1947)
Preliminary reading on Aleramo:
- Buttafuoco, Ada and Zancan, Marina, 1988. Svelamento. Sibilla Aleramo: una biografia intellettuale. Milano: Feltrinelli.
- Conti, Bruna and Morino, Alba, 1981. Sibilla Aleramo e il suo tempo. Vita raccontata e illustrata. Milano: Feltrinelli.
- Contorbia, Franco et al., 1986. Sibilla Aleramo: coscienza e scrittura. Milano: Feltrinelli.
- Fanning, Ursula, 1999. 'Sibilla Aleramo's Una donna: A case study in woman's autobiographical fiction', in The Italianist, 164-77.
- Grimaldi Morosoff, Anna, 1999. Transfigurations: the Autobiographical Novels of Sibilla Aleramo. New York: Peter Lang.
- Kroha, Lucienne, 1992. 'Strategies of intertextuality in Sibilla Aleramo's Una donna, in The Woman Writer in Late-Nineteenth-Century Italy: Gender and the Formation of Literary Identity. Lewiston and Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press.
- Zancan, Marina, 1995. 'Una donna di Sibilla Aleramo', in Letteratura italiana. Le opere, Vol. IV t. 1 L'età della crisi, edited by Alberto Asor Rosa. Torino: Einaudi. Pp 101-148.
Preliminary reading on Banti:
Coming shortly
Early Modern Women's letters: Franco and Tarabotti
This topic will look at letters written by the Venetian courtesan, Veronica Franco (1546-1591), and the literary nun Arcangela Tarabotti (1604-1652), in order to ask questions about the early modern letter as self-representation, about the self-fashioning of letters in general, and women's letters in particular. The voices of these two women are far from representative, but come from the margins and are polemical and extreme in different ways.
General bibliography on early modern letters:
- Maria Luisa Doglio, Lettera e Donna: Scrittura epistolare al femminile tra Quattro e Cinquecento (Rome: Bulzoni, 1993)
- Maria Luisa Doglio, L'arte delle lettere: idea e pratica della scrittura epistolare tra Quattro e Seicento (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2000)
- Gabriella Zarri, ed., Per lettera. La scrittura epistolare femminile tra archivio e tipografia, secoli XV-XVII (Rome: Viella, 1999)
- Early Modern Women and Transnational Communities of Letters, ed. Julie D. Campbell and Anne R. Larson (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009) [see especially the articles on Italy, including on Arcangela Tarabotti]
General bibliography on renaissance notions of 'selfhood'
- Greenblatt, Stephen, Renaissance Self-Fashioning from More to Shakespeare (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980)
- Greene, Thomas, 'The Flexibility of the Self in Renaissance Literature,' in The Disciplines of Criticism: Essays in Literary Theory, Interpretation, and History, ed. Peter Demetz et al (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), 241-64
- Martin, John, 'Inventing Sincerity, Refashioning Prudence: The Discovery of the Individual in Renaissance Europe,' American Historical Review 102 (1997): 1309-42
- Weissman, Ronald F.E., 'The Importance of Being Ambiguous: Social Relations, Individualism, and Identity in Renaissance Florence,' in Urban Life in the Renaissance, ed. Susan Zimmerman and Ronald F.E. Weissman (Newark, Del.: University of Delaware Press, 1989)
Veronica Franco
A useful modern edition and translation including a selection of Franco's letters is the one published in the Chicago 'Other Voice' series: Veronica Franco, Poems and selected letters, ed. and trans. by Ann Rosalind Jones and Margaret F. Rosenthal (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998) [The 15 letters included here are cited only in translation, however.] The introduction to this volume is particularly useful.
The Italian originals of Franco's letters in a sixteenth-century edition can be consulted on line
at:
http://dewey.library.upenn.edu/sceti/printedbooksNew/index.cfm?TextID=pq4623_f6_z48&PagePosition=1
[Photocopies of some letters will be provided in the course material.]
Secondary reading
- Margaret Rosenthal, The Honest Courtesan: Veronica Franco, citizen and writer in sixteenth-century Venice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992)
- Maria Luisa Doglio, 'Scrittura e "offizio di parole" nelle "lettere familiari" di Veronica Franco' in Lettera e Donna: Scrittura epistolare al femminile tra Quattro e Cinquecento (Rome: Bulzoni, 1993), pp.33-48
- Meredith Kennedy Ray, 'Settling the Debt: Veronica Franco's Literary Economics', available on line at: http://tell.fll.purdue.edu/RLA-Archive/1996/Italian-html/Ray%2CMeredith.htm
Arcangela Tarabotti
A modern edition of Tarabotti's letters has been published: Arcangela Tarabotti, Lettere familiari e di complimento, ed. Meredith Ray and Lynn Westwater (Turin: Rosenberg and Sellier, 2005) [Photocopies of some letters will be provided in the course materials]
Secondary reading
- Elissa B. Weaver, ed., Arcangela Tarabotti: A Literary Nun in Baroque Venice (Ravenna: Longo, 2006) [See in particular the essays by Lynn Westwater and Meredith Ray on Tarabotti's letters]
- Meredith Kennedy Ray, 'Letters from the Cloister: defending the literary self in Arcangela Tarabotti's Lettere familiari e di complimento', available on line at: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb1432/is_1_81/ai_n29090524/
- Arcangela Tarabotti, Paternal tyranny, edited and translated by Letizia Panizza (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004) - see the 'Volume Editor's Introduction'
Film and Autobiography: Fellini and Moretti
This topic will look at two of the most important filmmakers in Italian film history, Federico Fellini and Nanni Moretti, and examine what happens to the medium of film when it is used as a vehicle for autobiographical narrative, memory and diaristic reflection. Since the medium of film has predominantly not been used for such intimate first-person purposes, the topic explores how a new medium came to adapt to traditions of self-representation and the oblique solutions these two film directors came up with.
Core films
- * Federico Fellini, Amarcord (1973). See also by Fellini: Otto e mezzo, Fellini Roma, Intervista
- * Nanni Moretti, Caro Diario (1993). See also by Moretti: Io sono un autarchico, Palombella rossa, Aprile
Secondary reading
On Fellini:
- P. Bondanella, The Films of Federico Fellini (Cambridge: CUP, 2002)
- P. Bondanella, The Cinema of Federico Fellini (Princeton UP, 1992)
- F. Burke, Fellini's Films: from Postwar to Postmodern (NY: Twayne, 1996)
- Fellini on Fellini (London: Methuen, 1976)
- Rohdie, Fellini Lexicon (London: BFI, 2002)
- T. Kezich, Fellini (Milan: Rizzoli, 1988)
On Moretti:
- L. Rascaroli and E. Mazierska, The Cinema of Nanni Moretti. Dreams and Diaries (London: Wallflower, 2006)
- G. Bonsaver, 'The Egocentric Cassandra of the Left. Representations of Politics in the Films of Nanni Moretti', The Italianist, 20-1, 2001/2: pp.158-83 [mostly about Moretti's other films]
- S. Marchesi, 'Accumulazione e sviluppo. Il movimento della narrazione in Caro Diario', Annali d'italianistica, 1999, pp.77-93
- M. Marcus, 'Caro diario and the Cinematic Body of Nanni Moretti', Italica, 73 (2), Summer 1996: 233-47 (also in M. Marcus, After Fellini)
