ITAL 218 - On the Edge of Catastrophe: Giorgio Bassani’s The Garden of the Finzi-Continis

1 unit(s)

Giorgio Bassani (1916-2000), novelist, poet, essayist wrote this classic of modern Italian literature in 1962. Through the story of the Finzi-Continis, a wealthy Jewish family from Ferrara, Bassani recounts an important part of Italian history: Mussolini’s Fascist regime with its race laws, persecutions, and deportations. However, this is not simply a historical novel, it is also an autobiographical one, a book of memory, and a love story. The novel’s sophisticated structure, its clear and fiercely crafted language, at once high and idiomatic, its evocation of Ferrara, make this work a wonderful medium for the study of Italian language, history, literature, and culture. Particular attention is devoted to the development of oral and written skills. Individual and group multi-media projects.

Prerequisite(s): ITAL 206, ITAL 217 or permission of the instructor.

Two 75-minute periods.

Not offered in 2023/24.

Course Format: CLS