Orientalism and Colonialism in Italian Literature: course description
Document Actions
Valeria Finucci, Duke University
"Orientalism" and Colonialism in Italian Literature aims at retracing the discourse of the "Other" as registered in orientalist, colonial and new immigration writing in Italy. We will study early modern examples of racial differences and/or racial erasures (i.e. the travails of the sultan of Babylon's virgin daughter, Alatiel, and of the cross-dressed Ginevra at the Sultan's service in Boccaccio's Decameron) as well as narratives of the "Turk" (i.e. Umberto Eco's sack of Constantinople in Baudolino and Ottaviano Bon's visit to the harem in Istanbul in The Sultan's Serraglio).
To this context we will add the voice of non-Europeans looking at early modern Italy, such as Maalouf's recreation of papal Rome in Leo Africanus, and surprising narratives of slavery. We will also examine the fascination for orientalism in different mediums: a play by Gozzi, Turandot, where China is fictionalized; an opera by Verdi, Aida, in which an exotic Egypt is created; and a short novel by Baricco, Silk, in which a most unknown Japan comes center stage. We will visit critically the discourse on colonization that sustained and motivated the Italian conquest of Ethiopia and Albania under Mussolini as well as contemporary narratives of immigration to Italy by extra-European community nationals.
Four films (or selections) in which the topic at hand has found some appropriate treatment will be shown throughout the semester.
