Course teached as: B005317 - LETTERATURA FRANCESE 1 (12 CFU) Second Cycle Degree in EUROPEAN AND AMERICAN LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES Curriculum STUDI LETTERARI E CULTURALI INTERNAZIONALI
Teaching Language
Italian-French
Course Content
The course aims to identify, through the analysis of Baudelaire's "Fleurs du mal", the main characteristics of the so-called "symbolism", i.e.: metatextuality, nominalism, irony.
Such features will then be recognized in Stéphane Mallarmé's poetics.
- Charles Baudelaire, "Les Fleurs du mal" (Paper edition)
- Stéphane Mallarmé, "Poésies" (Paper edition)
[note: the reference texts are available at Librairie française de Florence, Piazza Ognissanti, 2-Firenze]
COMPLEMENTARY TEXTS:
- Paul Valéry, various articles on Symbolism ("Variétés"), in Oeuvres I, éd. de J. Hytier, Paris, Gallimard, La Pléiade, 1959.
CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY:
a) About poetic text:
- J. Lotman, "La struttura del testo poetico", Milano, Mursia, 1976.
- A. Marchese, "L'officina della poesia", Milano, Mondadori, 1985.
- Guido Mazzoni, "Sulla poesia moderna", Bologna, Il Mulino, 2015.
- Michel Riffaterre, "La production du texte", Paris, Seuil, 1979.
- S. Agosti, "Cinque analisi. Il testo della poesia", Milano, Feltrinelli, 1982.
b) About symbolism:
- "La poesia francese 1814-1914", a cura di L. Pietromarchi, Bari, Laterza, 2012.
- S. Cigada, "Il simbolismo francese", Milano, SugarCo, 1996.
- A. Barre, "Le Symbolisme: essai historique sur le mouvement poétique en France de 1885 à 1900", Genève, Slatkine, 1981.
- T. Todorov, "Symbolisme et interprétation", Paris, Seuil, 1978.
- L. Spitzer, "Marcel Proust e altri saggi di letteratura francese", Torino, Einaudi, 1977.
- Dictionnaire de Poésie de Baudelaire jusqu'à nos jours, sous la dir. de J. Jarrety, Paris, PUF, 2001.
- E. Verhaeren, "De Baudelaire à Mallarmé", Bruxelles, Complexe, 2002.
c) About irony:
-P. Schoentjes, "Poétique de l'ironie", Paris, Seuil, 2001.
-Ph. Hamon, "L'ironie littéraire,", Paris, Hachette, 1996.
d) Other texts:
- R. Barthes, "Le discours de l'histoire", Paris, Seuil, 1982.
- F. Orlando, "Gli oggetti desueti della letteratura", Torino, Einaudi, 2015.
e) About Baudelaire:
-J.E. Jackson, "La mort Baudelaire: essai sur les Fleurs du mal", Neuchâtel, La Baconnière, 1982.
- M. Richter, "Les fleurs du mal. Lecture intégrale", Genève, Slatkine, 2001.
- G. Macchia, "Baudelaire e la poetica della malinconia", Milano Mondadori 1975.
- J.-P. Sartre, "Baudelaire", Paris, Gallimard, 1947.
f) About Mallarmé:
- G. Posani, "Mallarmé: il tramonto di Dio e il mezzogiorno del capitale", Napoli, Guida, 1975.
- L. de Nardis, "L'ironia di Mallarmé", Roma, Sciascia, 1962.
- M. Blanco, "Edipo non deve nascere, Lettura delle "Poésies" di Mallarmé", Firenze, Olschki, 2016.
- J. Kristeva, "La révolution du langage poétique", Paris, Seuils, 1972.
[Note: all the works indicated are available, with rare exceptions, at the Biblioteca Umanistica of the University of Florence]
Learning Objectives
- confront with a complex textuality, marked by significative processes of meaning implicitation
(symbolization; conceptualism)
- through intertextuality, stimulate the capacity of comparison and critical relationship
- Learning approach methods for poetic texts
Prerequisites
A very good knowledge of French language (B2-C1) and a good level of metalinguistic awareness
Teaching Methods
Text Analysis in a contextual perspective with a mixed approach
(frontal lessons and seminar)
Further information
The course will be articulated in two modules (36 hours each)
Apart from the course programme, students are requested to prepare the following activities:
- 2 critical essays, at student's choice, on the basis of the critical bibliography present in the programme.
- wide knowledge of 19th century french literature (authors, works, historical process)
Type of Assessment
Oral examination
We will be evaluating
the following competences:
- Awareness in the course topic (10/30)
- Critical analysis and approach to poetical texts (10/30)
- Originality in elaboration of the different activities (10/30)
Course program
The course, divided into two parts, aims to discuss preliminarily the literary notion of "symbolism", whose meaning, being mostly associated to other contemporary labels as "decadentism", becomes a pure writing manner, producing suggestive images. Such reception is tied to a general romantic conception that tends to privilege in texts external phenomena, instead of formal aspects.
The review, in the first part of the course, of Baudelaire's main poetical texts will allow us to focus on the emergency of a critical and plural point of view, able to deeply undermine lyricism and monologism in the romantic poetry and to testify a nominalism which denounces the illusion of a moral goodness in the language and in the authorship. A fundamental junction is represented by the shift in the point of view and in enunciation: the poetical eye moves moves symbolically from an ideal countryside to the industrialized metropolis.
Baudelaires experience opens the way for Mallarmé's autoreferentiality. Polemically adopting, after Baudelaire, the sonnet in spite of the refusal of this form among romantic authors, he critically recovers its formal challenge. With Mallarmé the nominalism reaches the peak of the critical moment in poetical discourse, especially in its romantic-bourgeois aspects. Nevertheless, many contemporary authors, also due to the complexity of Mallarmé's poetics, will be using some technics in reproducing suggestive images, which will be called "symbolist". The misunderstanding between a poetic manner and a critical attitude in poetry is the assumption of the course, whose purpose is torecognize, in the literature and in the reality as well, Sartre's "illusion of immanence".