Metodi e approcci per l’analisi di testi letterari

Raffaella Baccolini, Roberto Carnero, Licia Reggiani, Università di Bologna

raffaella.baccolini(at)unibo.it, roberto.carnero(at)unibo.it, licia.reggiani(at)unibo.it

Abstract: This article focuses on three different approaches and methods of literary analysis: cultural studies, postcolonial studies, and feminist criticism. Each approach is analyzed with regard to different linguistic and literary contexts.  However, the choice to keep the three approaches separate is functional for the purposes of this essay and for the sake of greater clarity, since in fact they constantly intersect and intertwine due to their interdisciplinary nature and political dimension. The first part of the first section shows how the persistence of Croce’s approach to literature prevents Cultural Studies from being fully applied to the field of Italian studies. Their extraordinary potentialities are then presented, especially in the teaching of Italian literature. The second section traces the origins and the evolution of postcolonial studies as a particularly fruitful and complex research field, which is capable to inform some of the central literary, cultural, and ideological debates of our time. It also illustrates their main lines of research as well as the resistance to these studies from cultural contexts such as the French and Italian ones. Finally, the third and last section of the essay focuses on feminist criticism, particularly in the English-speaking context, from its beginnings in the late 1960s to the present. It focuses on its key concepts, such as the notions of “situated knowledges,” “re-vision,” the recovery of feminine traditions and “gynocriticism,” up to the concept of “intersectionality,” which analyzes discrimination in its complexity, recognizing how various systems of domination and dominant ideologies (racism, xenophobia, sexism, misogyny, transphobia, homophobia, ableism, ageism, etc.) intersect, producing effects on people and societies.