The course is aimed at first and second year students.

For first-year students

• no specific prerequisites are required on the Portuguese language world, but a good general knowledge (high school level) of Italian and international history and literature is desirable

For second-year students

• in addition to a good general knowledge (high school level) of Italian and international history and literature, they presuppose all the knowledge acquired during the first year of the course

For first year students

• Portuguese language I

For second year students

• Portuguese language II

• The successful completion of all tests prescribed for the first year course is requisite to take the examination for second year

Lessons

• are held in Italian, while the texts will be read in the original language accompanied by a translation (if it exists)
• they will take place in the classroom, with the aid of audio and video materials and, possibly, slides on certain topics

As for the material

• the professor will use Anthologies of texts elaborated ad hoc (the texts are prevalently in Portuguese, eventually with a translation);
• the Moodle platform will be used for professor / student interaction and sharing of materials distributed during lessons, as well as for bibliography or other materials that are difficult to find

For communications

• student receiving
• sending collective mails from the Moodle platform
• use of the "Cátedra Antero de Quental" Facebook profile for the dissemination of useful and complementary information

The theater of social criticism in Portugal of the Discoveries (and its survivals in Brazil in the twentieth century)

The theater, in Portugal, was born "adult", with the rich production of Gil Vicente (c.1465-c.1536), who bequeaths to the following generations a jumble of themes and types that will persist throughout literary history to the present day: devils, angels, girls in search of husbands, stripped gentlemen, old lovers, married friars, good-hearted peasants, village idiots, and blacks, gypsies, tailors, clerics, adulterers ... - a rich humanity and varied, which animates the social scene in the Portugal of the Discoveries. The object of the course is to follow the thread that links Gil Vicente to Francisco Manuel de Melo (1608-1666), passing through Anrique da Mota, Francisco de Sá de Miranda, Jorge Ferreira de Vasconcelos and Luís de Camões, and leads up to Brazilian contemporaneity, through the persistence of medieval models in popular Northeast literature, taken up by figures such as João Cabral de Melo Neto (1920-1999) or Ariano Suassuna (1927-2014). Taking as a background the literary and political history of Portugal and Brazil, the course is divided into two intertwined paths, during which will be provided bibliographic and methodological tools for the study of Portuguese literature and history from the origins to the seventeenth century, through critical  and anthological readings, and Brazilian literature of the early twentieth century, necessary to grasp the context in which the Portuguese theatrical texts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and the revival of the auto in twentieth-century Brazil appear. The detailed course program will be provided at the end of the semester.

Attention: ANY OTHER SPECIFIC BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCE WILL BE INDICATED DURING AND AT THE END OF THE COURSE.

Primary texts

• Anthology of texts from the origins to XVIIth century (in pdf on Moodle)
• Gil Vicente, La Barca dell'Inferno, Livorno, Vittoria Iguazù, 2015 (Auto da Barca do Inferno)
• Francisco Manuel de Melo, L’apprendista gentiluomo, Livorno, Vittoria Iguazù, 2019 (Auto do Fidalgo Aprendiz)
• Ariano Suassuna, La misericordiosa, Livorno, Vittoria Iguazù, 2014 (Auto da compadecida)
• João Cabral de Melo Neto, Morte e vita severina, Roma, Robin, 2003 (Morte e vida Severina. Auto de Natal Pernambucano)

• Gil Vicente, Pranto de Maria Parda, Siena, Protagon, 2002
• Gil Vicente, Farsa di Inês Pereira, sl, Nuova Pratiche editrice, 1994
• Gil Vicente, Il giudice della Beira, Roma, Carocci, 2006

Critical texts

For the preparation of the written exam

• - Valeria Tocco, Breve storia della letteratura portoghese, Roma Carocci, 2011, capp. 1-3
• - José Hermano Saraiva, Storia del Portogallo, Milano, Mondadori, 2004, capp. 1-7

For the preparation to the oral exam (essential bibliography)

• AA.VV., La letteratura latino-americana e la sua problematica europea, Roma, Instituto Italo-latino-americano, 1978
• Esperança Cardeira, Alina Villalva, Inferno, Colecção Vicente, Lisboa, Quimera, 1993
• Silvano Peloso, Medioevo nel sertão, Napoli, Liguori, 1983
• Stephan Reckert, O Essencial sobre Gil Vicente, Lisboa, Imprensa Nacional-Casa da Moeda, 1985
• Ugo Serani, L’immagine allo specchio: il teatro di corte di Gil Vicente, Roma, Il Bagatto, 2000
• Luciana Stegagno Picchio, Storia del teatro portoghese, Roma, Edizioni dell’Ateneo, 1964, capp. 1, 2, 3, 5
• Luciana Stegagno Picchio, Ricerche sul teatro portoghese, Roma, Edizioni dell’Ateneo, 1969, pp. 13-34; 39-62; 66-85; 87-112; 115--155; 157-171; 229-253
• Valeria Tocco, La «Comédia Eufrosina» tra Italia e Spagna: spunti per una rilettura, in Michela Graziani e Salomé Vuelta (a cura di), Relazioni linguistiche e letterarie tra Italia e mondo iberico in età moderna. IV Incontro, Firenze, Olschki, 2018, pp. 3-14

For non-attending students the program is identical. Non-attending students will be required to consolidate their preparation by extending the study to the whole the bibliography on the final exam programme that will be uploaded to Moodle, and will have to deal with independent reading and commenting of literary texts.

Non-attending students are asked to contact the professor at the beginning of the course.

he final vote will will result from the weighted average of the various activities planned, which consist of:

• A compulsory written test before the oral exam. The written test consists of a test divided into two parts. In the first one, which is a little more notionistic, the student will have to define in a precise but synthetic way some given phenomena, s/he will have to indicate dates or authors, place historical-political events in time and decide on the reliability of some statements. In the second, a freer part, s/he will have to express him/herself in Italian correctly by presenting an author, commenting on a prose text and a poetic text.
• An oral exam on the course topics.

Students must register both for the written test and for the oral examination on the University System (registration will end 5 days before the test date: non-registered students will not be accepted). The student can also take the ORAL exam in an exam session which is subsequent to the one in which he / she passed the written test (preparatory). However, if you do not complete the exam within the next two sessions, you will have to repeat the written test.

Course start date (first semester): to be indicated

The course is addressed to students of LIN (9 cfu) and LET (9 cfu).

• LET students (vecchio ordinamento) who eventually have to acquire only 6 credits will sit the written test and just prepare one part of the programme that will be indicated to them.
• LET students (vecchio ordinamento) who may have to earn 12 credits will have to face the complete 9-cfu programme and one week before the oral examination they will have to hand in a written assignment (in good Italian, complete with bibliography, following the editorial rules uploaded on Moodle) on a topic agreed with the professor.

Students are invited to register on the Moodle platform, on which all the materials distributed in class and all the useful and complementary information to face the exam will be uploaded

Students are invited to follow the Facebook page of the "Cátedra Antero de Quental" (catedranteroquental@gmail.com)