CULTURA E LETTERATURA PORTOGHESE II

Aim of the course is to provide theoretical, historical and literary tools to approach and critically understand the Portuguese culture and literatue from the eighteenth century to the present. The aim is to encourage students to interpret texts and literary history in their relationship with identity and (self) representation processes, marked by the colonial imagery and by the decolonization events.

The course is organized in lectures, dedicated to the historical context, history of literature and to the conceptual apparatus, and in the second part it requires the active participation of students, through group and individual analysis and commentary of literary texts and critical essays.

PART A

The course aims to provide a historical and literary framework from the second half of the eighteenth century to the present, focusing on the (self)reflection that Portugal makes, also and especially through its literature, on its identity in relation both to the European and the colonial space. The programme starts, in a diachronic perspective, from the era of the enlightened tyranny of the Marquis of Pombal and the awareness of the peripherical role of Portugal by the intellectuals estrangeirados, to focus later on the rethinking of Portuguese identity in the nineteenth century by the romantics, first, and by the intellectuals of the Geração 70, then. Through the leitmotif of the long series of historical traumas that mark the country since the late nineteenth century, the course focuses on the poetic expression of the end of nineteenth century and on the avant-garde of the early twentieth century, with particular attention to the role of Fernando Pessoa and his unique poetic gesture represented by heteronomy. The course concludes with the analysis of some specific literary and historical aspects that mark the Portuguese twentieth century, observing the literary expression in the crucial passages of the end of the Salazarist regime and the processes of decolonization.

PART B

The second part foresees the active participation of students working on one of the following literary and conceptual themes: a) Portugal; b) Brazil; c) Africa.

PART A

1) Valeria Tocco, Breve storia della letteratura portoghese, Roma, Carocci, 2011 (cap. da 4 a 8)

2) Antologia di testi: R. Vecchi-V. Russo, La letteratura portoghese. I testi e le idee, Milano, Mondadori, 2017 (durante la prima parte del corso saranno indicati i testi letterari compresi nell'antologia da includere al programma)

3) For non-attending students: Fernando Tavares Pimenta, Storia politica del Portogallo contemporaneo: 1800-2000, Firenze, Le Monnier, 2011.

PART B

Materials uploaded on Studium, related to the following themes: a) Portugal; b) Brazil; c) Africa.