ITAL 381 Storytelling in the Italian Tradition

How does the craft of storytelling help us face the task of living? Stories are a fundamental part of our lives: telling them; listening to them; reading them; watching them acted out on the television screen, in films, on the stage, in video games and in publicity. Since fairy tales permeate contemporary culture in a wide range of media, we will think about why they “stick” and how they have changed. How do contemporary films use the fairy tale plot, motifs, and narrative structures? Is “happily ever after” the signature mark of popular films? Why are Disney, feminists, and popular culture interested in retellings of fairy tale plots? Fictional stories allow us to imagine, to conjure sequence of images, unfolding before our inner eye, enabling us to dream when asleep and to turn mental patterns into stories when awake. We tell stories for many reasons: to entertain, to console, to teach, to persuade, to discover and to explore both our inner lives and the world we inhabit. Stories also serve as instruments to shape our future. In this seminar, we will read folktales, fairy tales, renaissance novellas, and modern and contemporary short stories in the Italian literary tradition. When discussing storytelling modes, we will focus on social realism, the grotesque, the fantastic, magical realism, and the comic in a wide selection of Italian authors’ stories including, but not limited to, Giovanni Boccaccio, Giambattista Basile, Luigi Pirandello, Giovanni Verga, Giorgio Bassani, , , , and . We will also explore the relationship between stories and film, television, and other visual media.

This course is taught in English and all readings are in English translation. FALL 2016 THH 115 Tue, Thu 12:30-1:50pm Dr. Margaret Rosenthal