CULTURE ROMANZE NEL MONDO

L-FIL-LET/09 - 6 CFU - 2° Semester

Teaching Staff

STEFANO RAPISARDA


Learning Objectives

The course aims to 1) introduce the students to the basic knowledge of Romance languages ​​and cultures (French, Provençal, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Romanian), their historical evolution, their diffusion in the modern and contemporary world and to 2) teach transfer this "knowledge" to the "skills" of cultural mediation.

At the end of the course, the student will have a basic knowledge of the diffusion of Romance cultures in the world, for example, he/she willk now that Louisiana is an American federal state bearing the name of Louis XIV of France and that numerous cities of that state have taken French toponyms (New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Lafayette, etc.); that the city of Buenos Aires has a neighborhood called "Palermo"; that in the phonology of Spanish spoken in Latin America there is a phenomenon called yeism; that a citizen of Senegalese origin can be easily addressed in French; that the name of the Philippines was intended by the explorer Ruy López de Villalobos in honor of the then Prince Philip, later King Philip II of Spain; that France administered until 1946 the so-called Indochina, from whose division four new independent states were born: North Vietnam, South Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos; that Italian migratory waves turned towards Argentina and the United States in the last century; that various film directors of Italian origins have represented the life of these communities, etc.

On this "knowledge" the student build "skills", from this "knowledge" he develop a "know-how". As an example, simply indicative, the student will have to know how to transfer the learned "knowledge" to new situations, for example, identifying on a map of Louisiana others and different toponyms of French origin that have not been the object of explicit instructions; will have to know how to transfer these "knowledge" to similar situations, for example that of the presence of Spanish toponyms in New Mexico; he will have to be able to explain why surnames of Spanish origin such as Aquino, Aquinaldo or Fernando are very common in the Philippines; must be able to use what he has learned to design effective interventions of cultural mediation; es. use knowledge on Francophonie or on yeism to determine a situation of communicative empathy with a speaker from equatorial Africa or Latin America; he must be able to understand and explain the reasons why a neighborhood in Buenos Aires bears the name of "Palermo" and must be able to relate it to Italian emigration to Argentina; must be able to connect the cinematography of Martin Scorsese or Francis Ford Coppola with the themes and lifestyles of the Italian emigrant communities in Americans, identifying the representation of a specific "anthropology"; in general, he must know how to establish connections with what he has studied and the world in which he lives.


Course Structure

Lectures, closa readings, case-studies.



Detailed Course Content

The Romance linguistic family - Languages and cultures - Classical Latin and vulgar Latin - Romania antiqua and Romania Nova - The classification of Romance languages - Elements of the history of Romance languages - Romance languages in the Middle Ages - The modern age: the construction of nations , identity, memory, national languages - Romance and political languages - Pan-Latinism - The spread of romance languages in the world - Romance community in the world - Europe, Africa, Asia, Americas, Oceania - Spreading in Eastern Europe: Romania and Moldova - The Spanish in the Americas - Portuguese in Africa, Asia, Latin America - The use of French as a lingua franca - Italian in the world of Italo-Americans - Creole languages - Supranational organizations: la Francophonie, the PALOP countries - 2012 : the dissolution of the Latin Union - Is there still a "unity of Romance languages"?



Textbook Information

General framework of Romance languages:

Rainer Schlösser, Le lingue romanze, il Mulino, Bologna 2005 (1 CFU)

 

Romance-speaking communities

Hebrew Sephardic community in Balcans, Elias Canetti, La lingua salvata. Storia di una giovinezza, Adelphi, Milano 2015

Italian emigration: Edmondo De Amicis, Sull’Oceano, ed. a scelta dello studente

Italian communities in the Levant: Edmondo De Amicis, Costantinopoli, ed. a scelta dello studente

Italians in Africa: Evelyn Waugh, In Abissinia, Adelphi, Milano 2015

French cultural policy in the world: Charle Christophe. Des sciences pour un empire culturel. In: Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales. Vol. 133, juin 2000,

French community in Algeria Amy Hubbell, The wounds of Algeria in Pied-Noir autobiography,

French communities in Asia: Paul Doumer, L'Indo-Chine française,, Souvenirs, Paris 1905 in

Portuguese communities in Angola and Mozambico: Antonio Lobo Antunes, E le colonie africane liberarono il Portogallo

Spansih in Latin America, the conquest: Bartolomé de Las Casas, Brevissima relazione della conquista delle Indie, ed. a scelta dello studente

Spanish communities in Philipine Islands: Rafael Rodríguez-Ponga, Pero ¿cuántos hablan español en Filipinas?/But how many speak Spanish in the Philippines? in “Cuaderno Hispanoamericanos”, 631, su descargas.cervantesvirtual.com.

 




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