ITAL 379 - Food and Fiction in Modern Italy

1 unit(s)

The course investigates the role of food as both subject and metaphor of modern Italian literature and film in the 19^th and 20^th century. While the representation of eating and cooking practices contributes to the realistic mode in fiction, food often mediates memories, anxieties, and desires in narratives of personal or national coming-of-age. Even non-fictional forms of food writing, such as cookbooks or documentary films, contribute to the narrative of Italian national unification and modernization as much as canonical novels and cinema. We analyze both written texts and film, try some of the dishes described, and explore the relationship between writing, cooking, reading, and eating, as acts of creation and fruition that shape personal, regional, and national identity. Tradition and innovation; scarcity and excess; inclusion and exclusion; taste and disgust; local, national, and global trends are among the ideas structuring class discussion and writing. In Italian. Simona Bondavalli.

Prerequisite(s): ITAL 220, ITAL 222 or ITAL 218, or permission of the instructor.

Not offered in 2016/17.

One 3-hour period.