Italian with Film Studies - BA (Hons)

UCL (University College London)

This module belongs to Italian. This is an intensive mandatory module for all students who are studying Italian in any Modern Languages and Modern Languages Plus combination, as well as for those following the single honours Italian BA. The module assumes a satisfactory performance in the first year Italian language module. The aim of the module is to develop knowledge and use of Italian and a knowledge and understanding of Italian culture sufficient for students to cope successfully with the demands of their Year Abroad programme in Italy. In view of this, the module will also aim at developing increasing autonomy in student learning, including the ability to identify and plan individual strategies for the learning of Italian and the study of literary, historical and other subjects in Italian.

This module belongs to Italian. The course explores the pivotal role Italy played in the early 19th century. Politically divided, culturally torn between legacies of the classical world and the new nationalist ideology that swept through Europe after the Napoleonic wars, Italy was a powerful magnet for the development of the new subjectivity we indicate with the word Romantic. Goethe, Heine, Byron, Shelley, Stendhal, and most of the great writers, musicians and artists visit Italy between the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th centuries. They write, compose and paint inventing a new idiom. In Italy itself, the solitary and extraordinary genius of Giacomo Leopardi reacts and enlightens a debate that will shape following generations, in many ways still very relevant today. Alessandro Manzoni's The Bethroted will also be part of the reading list. We will also refer to Operas and paintings of this period.

This module belongs to Italian. Between 1860 and 1925 Italy underwent profound transformations: the creation of the Italian state, and its difficult aftermath; industrialisation and urbanisation; the spread of literacy, popular culture and the vote; the traumas of the First World War and the rise of Fascism. The module aims to examine Italian literature?s response to some of these changes by examining a variety of the most important works of the period, ranging from verismo and children?s literature, to modernism.

This module belongs to Italian. Throughout its history, Italian cinema has shown a particular interest in the mixing up of fiction and reality through the production of films that combine documentary elements with fictive ones. This module will be focused on examples that move along the whole spectrum between documentary and fictional film. The lectures will provide the students with the historical and social background to the films and with a range of film-critical terminology that will be applied to the material introduced by the module tutor. Furthermore, various topics, such as the cinematic representation of power, the struggle for civil rights, the anthropological analysis of disadvantaged realities and the influence of media, will be investigated and discussed during the lectures and the subsequent seminars.

Italy was exceptional in sixteenth-century Europe for the large number and adventurousness of the publications produced by women. This module explores this phenomenon by looking at literary practices and ideas on gender and women in Italy c.1380-1600 in a selection of texts by both male and female writers. You will study selected works by Giovanni Boccaccio and Vittoria Colonna, as well as by the Venetian courtesan Veronica Franco and Moderata Fonte who set out more radical positions and challenges to the status of women. You will study these writers against the context of significant social, historical and intellectual shifts over the period, such as the rise of printing, the Counter-Reformation, and challenges to Aristotelian thought on women. The module aims to provide critical perspectives on the early modern representation of women and on literary culture. You will explore related topics of sex vs gender, women?s writing and the literary canon, the Renaissance debate on women (querelle des femmes), Petrarchism, religious culture, and neoplatonic ideas on beauty and love.

Your third year is spent abroad. This will not only bring the language and culture you are studying to life, but also strengthen your resourcefulness and self-reliance. You will normally spend this year studying at a university in your chosen country (or countries if you are studying two languages), but alternatives, such as work placements, may be possible.

This module belongs to Italian. This is a mandatory module for all students who are studying Italian in any Modern Languages or Modern Languages Plus combination, as well as for Italian BA students. The module requires successful completion of ITAL0009 Second Year Italian Language and of the Year Abroad Programme. The aims of the module are: to develop a high level of knowledge of Italian as a medium of understanding, communication and expression; to develop the understanding of the structure of Italian and of the historical and sociocultural contexts in which it has developed and it is used; and to study Italian as a gateway to other areas and subjects (literature, history, philosophy etc) and possibly further study at postgraduate level. Please note that a thorough knowledge of basic Italian grammar is a prerequisite for this course.

THIS COURSE IS ONLY FOR ESPS STUDENTS. IT IS TAUGHT TOGETHER WITH ITAL4040. The course offers European Social and Political Studies finalists a half-unit in Italian language assessed on the basis of the essay in Italian and the Italian oral.

This module belongs to Italian. The modules central themes are national identity and nation-building in Italy between Unification and the First World War. The first seminars are taken up by a theoretical and historical discussion of nations and nationalism, and by preparatory study of the state of Italian society in 1860. The main body of the module comprises topics that may include the following: education and children?s literature; crime and criminal anthropology; political culture; feminism; opera; patriotic monuments; Italian cuisine; Futurism; the South; the Galatian state. A representative work is studied for each topic, along with a wide range of historical and theoretical material. Students are therefore expected to know the set works in detail, to engage with new theoretical concepts, and to develop a good understanding of the central questions related to the issue of national identity in Liberal Italy.

This module belongs to Italian. This module offers the opportunity to study Dante?s Commedia, one of the most famous works of European literature. It is a poem that broke the mould in its own time, and has continued to fascinate readers ever since. At a time when serious literature was supposed to be written in Latin, Dante used everyday Italian, which caused scandal by giving open access to his opinions of popes and political leaders, bankers and warriors, poets and artists. The poem plunges its readers into a vividly imagined journey through the afterlife, raising all sorts of questions along the way about what Dante wanted to say, and how he chose to say it. What did he mean by calling his poem about death and judgement a ?comedy?? Why did he make the pagan poet Virgil his major guide to a Christian afterworld? Where did he imagine heaven, hell and purgatory to be located, and how did he claim to have gone there?

This module belongs to Italian. This module explores perceptions of identity in Renaissance Italy, bringing recent perspectives to the compelling thesis of Renaissance man?s individuality in Burkhardt?s foundational The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860). The focus is especially on how identity could be construed, or socially, politically, and culturally constructed, by individuals or groups, through theatre and the rich culture of the princely courts. We will examine Castiglione?s Il cortegiano (1528), which provides a subtle portrait of the court of Urbino and of the multifarious roles played by the ideal courtier. Theatrical works by Bibbiena, Ariosto and the Intronati of Siena will provide a further basis for exploring the complex dynamics involved in ?self-fashioning?, from dress and leisure pursuits to more challenging issues of imitation and dissimulation. Students will explore the aesthetics and ethics of performance, debates on nobility, linguistic issues, class and political identity, gender play, and also attitudes to sociability and humour. The study of theatrical texts will allow students opportunities to engage practically in class with issues of performance. A theatre visit will be programmed depending on availability.

This module belongs to Italian. Since the middle of the twentieth century the Italian novel has undergone profound transformations. Each generation of writers tends to take certain themes as its own and to establish stylistic trends: neorealism, experimentalism, new narrativity, ?I cannibali?. Within each generation important alliances are formed with publishing houses and newspapers, new literary magazines are founded, the map of Italian society is redrawn. These groupings tend to be abandoned once individual careers have been established. Each new generation of writers unfailingly accused the older one of provincialism, of being too tied to the national tradition. Occasionally, however, unexpected alliances appeared between young writers and others fifty years older ?I nuovi narratori? and Morante, Moravia, Bilenchi; ?I cannibali? and ?Gruppo 63?. The module will examine these changes in relation both to generational differences and to the individual careers of the authors themselves.

This module belongs to Italian. This module gives students practice of translation from Italian into English and vice versa, and of essay writing in English. For the translation classes, Affiliate students are allocated to the Final Year language groups to work on a range of texts. One half of each term is spent working on translation from English into Italian, the other half on translation from Italian into English, with different tutors. Students are encouraged to reflect on and discuss problems inherent in the practice of translation.

This module belongs to Italian. This module gives students practice of translation from Italian into English and vice versa, and of essay writing in English. For the translation classes, Affiliate students are allocated to the Final Year language groups to work on a range of texts. One half of each term is spent working on translation from English into Italian, the other half on translation from Italian into English, with different tutors. Students are encouraged to reflect on and discuss problems inherent in the practice of translation.

This module introduces students to representations of men on horseback in literature, arts, popular artefacts and publications, caricatures, animations, and films in Italy since 1861, and considers how images of cavalrymen and knights were received, transformed, appropriated and re-adapted by single authors and artists, cultural movements, and political powers. Students will look at a very broad range of primary sources from 1861 to the present by both canonical and lesser-known Italian writers, artists, and directors, and will learn how to connect and interpret written and visual images through the lenses of various theories.