Trauma and Disenchantment in Post-War Italy

Italian Neorealism was a flourishing literary and film movement in post-war Italy. The first half ofthis course will deal with some of its major novels, including Italo Calvino's "The Path to the Nest of Spiders", Beppe Fenoglio's "A Private Matter", and Primo Levi's "Survival in Auschwitz". Through these novels we will seek to understand Italy's experience of World War II and the complexities of the altered social and psychological conditions of everyday life during this time. The second half of the course will focus on neorealist film as a response to the trauma of the war. We will explore how the cinematic medium both reflects on and reacts to tragedy. Movies such as "Bicycle Thief" [Vittorio de Sica], "Rome, Open City" [Roberto Rossellini], "La Dolce Vita" [Federico Fellini], and "La Terra Trema" [Luchino Visconti] will be considered.