ITAL 142 SC - Italian Cinema and Literature: The Decameron

This course offers an introduction to Boccaccio's Decameron, one of the masterpieces of Italian literature, through a close reading of Boccaccio's collection of hundred tales, an investigation of the literary traditions (tradizioni) that converge in the most important prose work of the Italian Middle Ages, and its cinematic "translations" (traduzioni/tradimenti). During the semester, we will read all the novellas that have been adapted for the screen by Pier Paolo Pasolini (Decameron, 1971), and the Taviani brothers (Magnifico Boccaccio, 2015) identifying the challenges that such a classical Italian work presents to Italian filmmakers in their attempts to transcribe it into an audiovisual spectacle. By reading and analyzing a large selection of Boccaccio's one hundred novelle, and watching and examining their corresponding filmic transpositions, we will address notions and problems of language, style, structure and content for each novella, together with the techniques of transposition of the written text to the movie screen.

Syllabus  

Prerequisite(s): ITAL044 SC  or equivalent.
Course Credit: 1.0


This course information is from the 2023-2024 Scripps Catalog. View this catalog.
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