Culture Courses

Course A or Survey Course

The teacher provides a full historical background and general picture of Italian literature from its origins to today.
• The birth of the Italian language and the origins of its literature.
• Dante and the "Divine Comedy".
• The poetry of Francesco Petrarca and the prose of Giovanni Boccaccio.
• The Age of Humanism: Lorenzo de' Medici and Angelo Poliziano.
• The Renaissance: Ludovico Ariosto and Niccolò Machiavelli.
• Literature of the Counter-Reformation: Torquato Tasso. The XVII Century and the Baroque Period. L'Arcadia.
• The Enlightenment and Neo-classicism. Ugo Foscolo.
• Romanticism. Giacomo Leopardi.
• Alessandro Manzoni, the question of language and the "Promessi Sposi" (The Betrothed).
• Realism. Giovanni Verga: "I Malavoglia".
• Decadence: Gabriele D'Annunzio and Fascism.
• The New Lyrical Poets: Montale, Ungaretti and Quasimodo.
• Contemporary writers: Moravia, Pavese, Calvino.

Course B or Seminar

This is an in-depth seminar on one selected period or author, e.g. Calvino, Pirandello, Moravia, Eco.

All the supplementary, professional and cultural courses are reserved only for those who are enrolled in a language course.

The course must have a minimum of 3 students enrolled.