In conformity and coherent with the learning objectives of the MA Course, students must acquire specific knowledge of Boccaccio criticism and develop suitable skills in the understanding and analysis of the proposed texts.
On completion of the course students must demonstrate mastery in comprehension of the literary language, style and narrative techniques linked to Boccaccio’s oeuvre; and similarly with regard to thematically correlated coeval texts. Students should be conversant with the most important critical positions applied to exegesis of the author’s text and with the sources that have contributed to its construction, as well as with the “history of the mentality” of the period when Boccaccio’s volumen was produced. Students must furthermore absorb knowledge of the development, in a diachronic sense, of the theme in question within the framework of the History of Italian Literature.
It is hoped that the skills consolidated will include an independent approach to exegesis and judgement of the literary text. In this way students will develop, in navigating the critical panorama and in the light of the methods learnt, a personal attitude to the choice, and consequently the critical reading, of one or a series of thematically correlated texts.
Autonomy of judgement must moreover be bound to appropriate communicative skills that will render students persuasive as much in the oral expounding of their critical acquisitions and positions as in a written essay. In fact the latter is the specific tool for dissemination of critical thought at all levels.
Exercise on the literary text is the tool for fine-tuning the foremost skill offered by the MA Degree Course: consolidation of the powers of reasoning, of the critical spirit and the absolute independence of individual judgement. Acquisition of this makes students of the Degree Course competitive in the various professional opportunities connected thereto.