F0406 Orientalism, Colonialism and Post-Colonial Italian Literature

The course aims at retracing the discourse of the \"Other\" as registered in orientalist, colonial and new immigration writing in Italy. We will start with 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; the adventures of the \"white\" Ethiopian woman warrior Clorinda in Tasso\'s Gerusalemme Liberata and of the \"black\" Venetian Moor in Giraldi Cinzio\'s Hecatommiti). We will then move to narratives of the \"Turk\" (i.e, Eco\'s sack of Costantinople in Baudolino and Bon\'s visit to the harem in The Sultan\'s Serraglio). To this context we will add the voice of non-Europeans looking at early modern Italy, such as Pamuk\'s rendering of the Turkish fascination for Renaissance Venetian art in My Name is Red and Maalouf\'s sense of papal Rome in Leo Africanus. Next we will 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 conclude by visiting critically the discourse on colonization that sustained and motivated the Italian conquest of Ethiopia and Eritrea under Mussolini as well as contemporary narratives of immigration to Italy by extra-European community nationals.