Dr. Kristin Stasiowski

This course will focus on the close reading and analysis of selected masterworks of the modern Italian novel tradition. The main goals will be to investigate the Italian novel’s evolution from the nineteenth-century emphasis on realism, history, and socio-familial issues, to early twentieth-century themes highlighting the role of the individual, the birth of psychology, and the trauma of modernity. We shall also consider the diverse geographic and regional linguistic contexts out of which these novels emerged. Participants will read selections from: Luigi Pirandello’s The Late Mattia Pascal (1904), Italo Svevo’s The Confessions of Zeno (1923) and Italo Calvino’s The Nonexistent Knight (1951). Narrative techniques, language, and thematics will be discussed in detail during class. All texts will be discussed in ENGLISH translation. No prior experience, or reading, is required.

Lesson I: Luigi Pirandello’s The Late Mattia Pascal (1904). This lesson will explore the extraordinary psychological and existential themes for which Luigi Pirandello is best known and for which famed literary critic Harold Bloom held him in esteem, comparing him to Kakfka, Proust, Joyce, and Beckett among others.

Lesson II: Italo Svevo’s The Confessions of Zeno (1923). This lesson will explore the continued theme of psychology in narrative as we discuss Svevo’s use of Freudian psychoanalysis in the life of his protagonist, Zeno. Mentored by none other than James Joyce, and lauded by Eugenio Montale, Svevo’s Zeno represents a breakthrough success in the Italian experimental novel.

Lesson III: Italo Calvino’s The Nonexistent Knight (1951). This lesson will explore the post-modern aspects of one of Calvino’s most entertaining novels. Participants will also learn about the Italian Renaissance Epic, the tradition from which Calvino draws, in order to understand the literary, historical, and psychological context for this masterwork of Italian literature.

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