"The Old and the Young"

Course subject: The Old and the Young
In this first year of activity, the subject of the course is The Old and the Young: as in the novel by Pirandello bearing the same title (the book redraws literary concepts already present in nineteenth-century fiction, from Stendhal to Turgenev to naturalism), the dialogue between different generations is a subject that delves deeply in family relationships as well as in political and social ones, not forgetting the challenge and interaction between revolution and tradition, a confrontation that drives various manifestations of art and literature throughout the twentieth-century.
The conferences and seminars aim to explore some facets of this confrontation, passing through (what has just now become) ‘last’ century’s fiction, theatre and film. The drama and cinema videos will proceed along the same tracks.

Professors and tutors
Synapsis’ activities follow three different paths: ten conferences, followed by a debate; four seminars, from which each participant must choose one (attendance of a second seminar is optional); evening projections of film and theatre videos.
The ten conferences shall be held by professors: Gillian Beer, Maurizio Bettini, Roberto Bigazzi, Remo Ceserani, Umberto Eco, Margareta Garpe, Peter Madsen, Elisabeth Rallo, Antonio Tabucchi, JürgenWertheimer.
The seminars shall be coordinated by professors: Gillian Beer; Laura Caretti e Michela De Giorgio; Remo Ceserani; Elisabeth Rallo.
The projections will be coordinated by professors Laura Caretti and Andrea Martini (featuring the participation of Margarethe von Trotta, film director and Margareta Garpe, director of Stockholm’s Dramaten ).
In each seminar the professor will be aided by a tutor, whose job is to guide the personal work of individual participants. The tutors are: Pierluigi Pellini, Orsetta Innocenti, Carla Scura and Ferdinando Amigoni.

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Lecturers

Gillian Beer
Gillian Beer is King Edward VII Professor of English Literature and President of Clare Hall, University of Cambridge. Among her books are Darwin's Plots (1983, 2000) and Virginia Woolf's The common Ground (1996).

Maurizio Bettini
Maurizio Bettini teaches Classical Philologiy at the University of Siena, where he has founded, in conjunction with other scholars, the Anthropology and Ancient World Centre. His main field of research is in fact the study of Greek and Roman culture (often in relation with the experience of modernity from an anthropological point of view. Among his works: Il ritratto dell'amante, I classici nell'età dell'indescrizione, Nascere (Premio Isola d'Elba 1999), all published by Einaudi.

Roberto Bigazzi
Roberto Bigazzi is professor of Italian Literature at the University of Siena. He has written on the Renaissance (Ariosto and Tasso) and has published several books on the novel from a comparative point of view, as his most recent book Le risorse del romanzo. Componenti di genere nella narrativa moderna, Pisa 1996.

Laura Caretti
Laura Caretti has taught English Literature at the University of Rome 'La Sapienza' and is now Professor of Theatre and Performing Arts at the University of Siena. She is also life member of Clare Hall, Cambridge. She has written on Shakespeare in Performance, Ibsen, Pirandello, Eleonora Duse,Gordon Craig, Beckett, The Living Theatre, contemporary playwrights, but
also on poetry and narrative.

Remo Ceserani
Remo Ceserani is professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Bologna. He is editor of several book series.
As of 1994, he is president of the Association for Studies in Comparative theory and history of Literature.
He currently directs a widespread research group ( Basel, Bologna, Cosenza, Macerata, Roma III, Pisa, Scuola Normale di Pisa ) on the narration of dreams in modern literature and is collecting a book of articles on the relationship between modern literature and technology (photography, the media, etc.). Among his most recent works: Raccontare il postmoderno (1997), Guida allo studio della letteratura (1999)

Michela De Giorgio
Michela De Giorgio is Professor of History of Journalism at the University of Sassari. Her research interests concentrate on the history of women; she has recently published Le italiane dall'Unità a oggi (2nd ed., Bari 1993), Il modello cattolico in Storia delle donne in occidente, ed. by G. Duby and M. Perrot (vol. IV, 3rd ed., Bari 1995) and has co-edited Storia del matrimonio (Bari 1996).

Umberto Eco
Umberto Eco was born in Alessandria (Piemonte, Italy) in 1932. He's been teaching semiotics at the University of Bologna since 1975. Among his most famous essays: The Open Work (Opera Aperta, 1962), Diario Minimo (1963), La struttura assente (1968), A Theory of Semiotics (Trattato di Semiotica Generale, 1975), Lector in fabula (1979), The Limits of Interpretation (I limiti dell'interpretazione, 1990). His first novel, The Name of the Rose (Il nome della rosa), was written in 1980 and has been followed by Foucault's Pendulum (Il pendolo di Foucault, 1988) and The Island of the Day Before (L'isola del giorno prima, 1994). He has also designed Encyclomedia, an important hypertextual encyclopedia.

Margareta Garpe
Margareta Garpe is a playwright working mostly at the Dramaten Theatre in Stockholm (but also for television and cinema). She has written and directed For Julia with Bibi Andersson, an account of a mother-daughter relationship, and other successful plays (All Days, all Nights).

Peter Madsen
Peter Madsen is professor and chair of Comparative Literature at the University of Copenhagen and the author of i.a. Semiotics and Dialectics (1972, in Danish), co-author and -editor of an 8 volume History of Danish Literature, has published essays on Sterne, Baudelaire, Conrad, Ibsen and others, and was most recently co-editor of The Urban Lifeworld (forthcoming 2001).

Andrea Martini
Since 1982 Andrea Martini has been teaching History of film at University of Siena. He is Associate Professor at Arezzo (Siena). His books and essays on film criticism and theory include writing on the Marx Brothers, Pialat, Ripstein, and Italian Cinema. His work for television includes the documentaries: Bergman by Bergman (1992) and Cinèastes et Citoyens
(1996) [on Nanni Moretti's cinema] made for Arte, the French-German network.

Elisabeth Rallo
Elisabeth Rallo is professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Provence. She has also been interested in psychoanalysis and ethnology. In the literary field, she has dealt particularly with the role of adolescence
in twentieth-century fiction. Her principal works include: L'adolescent dans le récit au XX siècle (1989); Méthodes de Critique Littéraire (1992 and 1999); Le roman en France au XX siècle (1994). Her essay on Stendhal (La Chartreuse de Parme de Stendhal, texte fondateur) will soon be published.

Antonio Tabucchi
Antonio Tabucchi (b. Pisa 1943 ), professor of Portuguese Language and Literature at the University of Siena, is renowned for
his many discussions and articles on Pessoa, Portuguese theatre and C. D. de Astrade. His recent works include: Requiem (1992 ), Sogni di Sogni (1994), Sostiene Pereira ( 1994 ), La testa perduta di Damasceno Montero (1997), La gastrite di Platone (1999).

Margarethe Von Trotta
Margarethe Von Trotta, born in 1942, entered the world of cinema in 1975, following the release of The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum (Die Verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum), an adaptation of Heinrich Böll's novel. In 1981 she was awarded the Leone d'Oro at the Festival del Cinema in Venezia for Marianne and Julianne (also played in Us art houses under the title The German Sisters). Her most recent films include: Fear and love (1988), The african woman (1990), The long silence (1993).

Jürgen Wertheimer
Jürgen Wertheimer was born in Munich and studied German literature and Comparative Literature in Münich, Siena and Rome. He currently teaches contemporary German Literature and Comp.Lit. at Tübingen Univ. (Germany). Since 1992 he is co-editor of "ARCADIA", the leading German journal in the field of Comparative Studies. Among his vast production, several monographies deserve special mention, such as the ones dealing with dialogic discourse in S.George’s works, the aesthetics of violence, Nelly Sachs, the relationship between verse and politics, erotism in literature. He has directed an annotated version of Celan’s works and has also, in the last few years, been investigating the conflicts and relationships that arise between different cultures.