The course offers a survey of the main tenets of Italian Verismo through the readings of the main novels and novellas by Giovanni Verga. Verismo was, on the one hand, the counterpart of French Naturalism; on the other, the logical development of the reflection on realism that Romantic writers had privileged. Through the discussion of the main narrative works by Verga, the course aims at identifying the historical discourse within the nineteenth-century Italian literature and, whenever it will be possible, at comparing Verismo with French Naturalism.

Required texts: Giovanni Verga, I Malavoglia, Milan: Mondadori, 1983 [OCLC: 17319705] Giovanni Verga, Mastro-don Gesualdo, Milan: Mondadori, 1983 [ISBN: 8804228938 (pbk.); 9788804228936 (pbk.)] Giovanni Verga, Tutte le novelle, Milan: Mondadori, 1983 [OCLC: 10395014]